Hifi USB player fro under 250 Euro

HI, I'm trying to find a cheap and invisible solution to play back flac files located on a 2TB HD.
In theory, if smartphones would be able via OTG to charge, read an external HD and stream data to an external dac everything would be solved and truly small and cheap.
I tried this way in several configurations but something goes wrong. At the end everything worked however the phone was not able to stream flacs fast enough to the dac so that sound dropped continuously.
In my experience the cheapest solution would be an old laptop + external HD + External DAC. I have an 19 years old Think Pad T21 with a 600 mhz single core cpu which does the job perfectly, even with high-res flacs, despite the USB1 interface. However this configuration is to big and to noisy.
Finally i bought the SMSL DP3 which has an decent inbuilt DAC. Unfortunately this device is unable to playback any flac from usb without drops, drops and drops. Changed HD to WD MyBook (read 110 mbs), changed files system from NTFS to extfat to XT3...nothing. My Smartphone+otg+dac was doing better. 
How is it possible that modern 1kg device is not able to do what a 20 years old 3kg device is able to do? Storytelling is not everything seems.
Anyone has a working solution for my requirements? Maximum budget, including DAC, 250 Euro.
Thanks for any idea.