When I was in your position looking for a streamer to change up from using my laptop, the biggest thing aside from sound quality was the user interface. As I had to have it connected over wifi that reduced the list of components I could look at. I finally settled on Auralic and I use their Lightning DS app. I have no idea why some people don’t like it as it’s incredibly intuitive and seamlessly integrates Qobuz, Tidal and Amazon Music. You can organise your music into playlists and access music on hard drive or NAS if so inclined although it doesn’t sound like you are.
I have never had a problem with the software and you don’t need a computer to set the streamer and software up, only an iPad which may be a deal breaker for you. I say all this just to give my positive experience with Lightning DS as an option.
My advice then is to work out whether you need wifi or can it be hard wired, if hard wired you have more options. Once you know that I would strongly recommend choosing a product that has an excellent app. I know everyone seems to love roon, but there are great apps now that do the same job and reduce the expense of paying for roon. Innuos has their own app and I watched their hour presentation on it, it seems superb with excellent functionality and a great intuitive user interface. By all accounts people also love the lumin app, aurender app and the bluOS app, so there are plenty of choices.
Narrow those questions down and you’ll have a group of options that you can read reviews on to narrow down to 1 or 2 and then it’s demo time.
