A new company called New Matter wants to bring back the dedicated music player. On September 30 it announced Sudo, a pocket player with a physical wheel and a shape that will look very familiar to anyone who owned an iPod Classic. Reservations are open now for $50 toward an expected price of $249, with shipping expected in late 2027. I have reserved one, and I am genuinely excited about it.
What New Matter has announced
Sudo is built around one job: playing music without a phone’s distractions. According to New Matter’s site, it has a 2.73-inch touchscreen at 320 x 320 pixels and a tactile wheel for scrolling and control, much like the iPod’s click wheel. Storage is 64 GB, with a microSD slot for cards up to 1 TB, which leaves room for a large lossless library. It has a 3.5 mm headphone jack, Bluetooth, USB-C charging and a claimed battery life of more than 20 hours.
The player runs New Matter’s own software, Sudo OS, and the company lists both offline playback and streaming. It measures 103.5 x 58.6 x 8.5 mm, according to New Matter. The renders show silver and orange versions, and the company says reservation holders can confirm their colour before production.
Why this one hits home for me
I am a late-1980s baby, so I was in my late teens when the iPod Classic came out, and it was a key piece of hardware in my life. Apple quietly discontinued it on September 9, 2014, when its last version cost $249, according to the Associated Press. More than a decade later, Sudo’s expected price lands on that same figure. That history is a big part of why Sudo excites me.
Owning your music again
Consumer hardware keeps getting more expensive, and memory is a big reason. AI data centres are expected to use 70% of high-end memory production in 2026, and memory prices rose about 50% in the last three months of 2025, according to a Wall Street Journal report covered by Windows Central. The research firm TrendForce expects another 70% rise in 2026.
To me, that pressure is pushing people toward self-hosting, and toward maintaining and owning their own hardware and media again. A player that keeps a full library on the device and on a memory card connects with that sentiment really well. The same memory costs could also affect Sudo itself, and New Matter says the final price will be confirmed before reservation holders pay the rest.
What we do not know yet
The company is the biggest open question. New Matter publishes no team names, founders or address, only a contact email, and the sudo.music domain was registered in August 2026. Every image so far is a render, which led Max Frequency to describe the launch as more of a concept reveal than a product launch. None of that is evidence of a scam, but it does mean there is no track record to judge yet.
Several details that matter to music fans are also missing. New Matter has not said which streaming services Sudo will support, and it has not published the audio chip, supported file formats or Bluetooth codecs. Those details will decide whether Sudo is a great player or simply a nice-looking one. They are the first things I will look for in New Matter’s updates.
How the reservation works
The $50 reservation holds a place in the first production batch and is applied to the final price. According to New Matter’s terms, the deposit is fully refundable until it is applied to a completed purchase, and payments run through Stripe. The same terms say a reservation does not guarantee that Sudo will be made or ship by a particular date, and that New Matter may cancel reservations and refund deposits if it cannot fulfil them.
My own reservation went through for a Sudo in the Basalt colour, number 544 in Batch #1. The confirmation page says the position reflects reservation priority and does not guarantee the exact shipping order. It also points to the Stripe receipt as the record to keep.
Reservations are open in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, with a waitlist for other countries. With delivery more than a year away, anyone reserving should keep the confirmation email. Getting a refund that far out depends on the company honouring its own terms.
Why I am in for $50
I personally hope New Matter can deliver and provide a quality product. A $50 refundable deposit is a small bet, and I will be watching Sudo with interest. I am excited, and I am hopeful.
