Astell&Kern ACRO CA1000 is a supercharged next-gen headphone amp

Although huge numbers of us have gone wire-free for our headphones, there’s still many who prefer wired.

For those who use both, Astell&Kern has launched this – the Acro CA1000, a fully-featured headphone amp with integrated digital audio player smarts.

The $2,100/£1,999 features a bunch of different headphone outputs and numerous different inputs, too, including optical, coaxial, USB-C and analogue. You can also charge devices via a separate USB-C port, too.

The ACRO CA1000 also features Bluetooth 5.0 with support for 24-bit aptXTM HD and LDAC codecs. So if you do want to go wireless, you can so so easily and with top sound quality.

The digital audio player part of the device is similar to Astell&Kern’s excellent standalone players. It features an Android-based OS and a 4.1-inch touchscreen.

There’s also 256GB of memory as standard so you can store plenty of hi-res albums for playback. Sound sources can also have their volume uniformally adjusted so you don’t need to be constantly adjusting the volume.

Because of its size we wouldn’t say it’s a portable unit (like something like the Chord Mojo) and it’s probably more suited for home use, perhaps at a desk. However, it does feature an 8,400mAh battery for up to 10.5 hours playback if you do want to take it somewhere where you don’t have ready access to a power supply.