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Jan 25, 2016
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So I bought this recently, although not through Massdrop. It's $128.90 with Prime on Amazon. I've had it for a couple weeks but haven't written a detailed review yet. Overall, I've been loving it. The included solution for carrying it around with your phone is a set of elastic bands. I opted for a more drastic solution and affixed it to the back of my Note 2 with industrial velcro. The device is a little heavy, but it's not that bad. If you've already decided to carry around a battery powered DAC, this isn't going to be too different from anything else that's out there. The chassis and physical buttons are very nice. The sound quality isn't out of this world compared to some of the nicer audio interfaces I have, but it is leaps and bounds beyond the built in audio on almost every Android device, especially if you have nice headphones. I use Sennhieser HD-25's and they sound very thin through the built in audio on my Note 2 but the FiiO drives them very nicely.
When I originally ordered this device, I was a little confused about the functionality and what it could actually do. I'll try and break that down here:
What you can do:
- Charge internal battery and use as a USB DAC on a computer at the same time - Use as a USB OTG DAC on a compatible Android or iPhone - Use as an external battery pack for an Android device There are three things that this device does NOT do that I kind of wish it did. Those are:
- Charge internal battery through separate charging port and also use as an Android USB DAC - Charge an Android device and use the USB DAC functionality at the same time - Charge Android device through DAC USB port and also charge internal battery through charging port To be clear about the last point, you cannot charge an external device at the same time the internal battery itself is being charged. It would be nice if the charge would go into a "passthrough" mode or something similar once the internal battery is done charging so you would only have to leave the DAC plugged in to charge the whole rig. Overall, I'd give the thing 4/5 stars.
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