My main player is an Ibasso DX50. I tend to run the line-out into either an amp or my car and its really good. It's pretty much the same concept as the Pono, although the DAC's are different (DX50 uses a Wolfson DAC, which is known for being fairly warm sounding and is found in some iPods, Pono uses a Sabre ESS9018 DAC which is known for detail retrieval).
I'll be watching the reviews on this. The price on it is pretty fair, right in line with the newer wave of audiophile portables (the Sabre DAC is pricy, it tends to be expensive to implement) Hopefully they can get the sound right...The Ibasso players tend to change sound quality and characteristics with each firmware. They came out with Rockbox for it a few months ago and I've stuck with that.
Also, I can attest to the hi-res debate. I had some downloads of some vinyl in 24/96 and I felt like I was gaining a small bit of headroom...not quite enough to justify the size. Considering the majority of VGM is released only in standard 16/44.1, it's not a feature that would see much use anyway.
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