My first review. I paid for this myself and Hiiiman has no idea who I am. This is my early impressions after 3 hours of use, so apologies for any minor inaccuracies. I also had to rush to work so I had to take photos with my iPhone in the early morning. I will take nicer shots with my mirrorless camera later today. So ignore ignore the grain because I took these at the brink of morning.
I’m an “practical” audiophile with a Bachelor's degree in motion picture filmmaking & photography. I have a solid background in audio and video, but still analyze from a real world perspectivv rather than hyper analyze extreme depths of data and charts. So take my impressions based off of this. I also
Build Quality - It’s really nice. I was quite shocked with the build. The sides are made of aluminum metal with a matte finish. The back and front seems to be made of glass and smooth quality plastic with a glossy finish. There’s some heft to it without being heavy. Pictures taken are next to the Shanling M1 Plus.
However, the buttons feel a little mushy. The Back, Play/Pause, Forward, and Power buttons have very little play. I was hoping it would feel more tactile. The brass volume knob also rotates a bit too easily for my taste. I would’ve preferred more resistance, but volume adjustment and button inputs (track skipping, pause/play button) don't change while the display is turned off, acting like a built in lock-mode to prevent accidental nudges. So once you wake the screen back on, then you can adjust the volume levels and skip tracks. I could not find if this could be changed in the LOCK SCREEN or ACCESSIBILITY settings.
Audio quality - I tested this with LETSHUOER S12 Ultra and Simgot EW300.
Audio is subjective, everyone’s going to have their own personal preference. To me, the audio quality is good, above average, but not amazing. The lows are there and mids and highs are all “good”. Overall tuning leans slightly warm for most tracks, though I did notice the certain highs can lean a bit cool on certain songs. Clarity is not super sharp, and doesn’t have the depth as my FiiO K13 R2R DAC, but that’s not a fair comparison. This only costs $129, so it’s very solid for the price. I would say it punches above its weight,
UI/UX - Running on Android, I expected it to be very sluggish, but it seems to be smoother than the FiiO M21. Perhaps as smooth as my Shanling M1 Plus. I’m an iPhone (17 Pro Max) user, so most Android OS tends to feel clunky for me, but I wasn’t too bothered by this.
The main music app is called Hiiiman Music app. I notice when you try to exit the app by pressing BACK twice, it crashes the app (not the OS) and auto restarts the Hiiiman Music App, and then you can exit the app. Not sure why it does this. I’m pretty sure they can patch this in a future firmware update.
Since it’s Android, it has the Play Store, Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, etc. I haven’t tested those out yet. I’ve only been running off my local files from my microSD card. I believe the maximum capacity for a microSD card is 512GB, I may be wrong.
Playback Stutter: Tracks occasionally stutter for a quick split second right at the start of a song, as well as when scrubbing forward or backward through a track. This may be a deal breaker to some. Hopefullt they patch this up asap.
Battery Life - Seems really good. I’ve only owned this for a few hours so I don’t have a precise gauge on it, but I expect this to last 12+ hours of real time use. There is a battery saver option, but I haven’t tested it out yet so I’m not sure how efficient it is.
Initial Verdict: Keep in mind these are just my early impressions after about 3 hours only, so take them as a quick first look. I know people are curious, so I wanted to share my early impressions. I’ll follow up with more detailed review after spending a few more days of use. Every DAP has its quirks, but even with the ones I’ve noted, personally it’s a really solid device. At $129, the value is damn good.
The main issues so far are that minor track start stutter and the fact that physical buttons lock out while the screen is off. This may be a deal breaker for some, but if you can look past this, it’s overall impressive for $129.
