Audiophiles have long looked down on digital music because the sound quality was vastly inferior to listeners with golden ears and particular tastes. The development of lossless file formats (such as FLAC) and inexpensive multi-gigabyte storage made portable high-fidelity music a reality.
At this point, there are really only two major players in the high-end portable music space: Astell & Kern and Sony (where the Walkman brand still lives). We used the previous versions of each brand, but not the current models. Astell and Cairn Players they start at $1000 and are strictly for true enthusiasts.
If you're someone who has hard drives full of uncompressed music audio files — and can hear the difference between those and relatively low-res MP3 and AAC files — then by all means pair one of those players with your wired headphones of choice.
Almost all music streaming services now offer lossless or high bitrate options; these are almost all the big players, from Tidal and Qobuz to Amazon and Apple. (Spotify Hi-Fistrangely, it remains non-displaying.)
If you like what you hear, consider upgrading to a decent headphone DAC (that's a “digital to analog converter”) like Audiofly Dragonfly or iFi Audio Go and a serious pair of wired headphones. Then you'll have a solid audiophile option that's good for the road, without the need for a stand-alone music player.