It's great. Small, decent materials, and has more than enough power to drive IEMs and most low-impedance headphones. If you want a better equalizer or more power, get the Qudelix 5k or the new Fiio BTR15 (whenever those become available).
buzzbub
joined 1 year ago
In all seriousness: it drives the 3s just fine, but it, um, sounds like a walkman, so it isn't replacing digital sources anytime soon. I do get a kick out of repairing these, though I don't listen to them much. This one needed belts and all new electrolytic capacitors.
There’s a bit of a lower-mids and upper-bass scoop that I found noticeable. You can see it on the rtings.com measurements. It’s easy to correct with eq.
I'm a university professor. I'd argue that a non-distracting device that tells you the time is an essential tool of my profession and we all wear watches when we're teaching. A smartwatch with notifications silenced is one option, but an analogue watch of some sort is considerably less fiddly.
On my phone I'm fine with 256 kbps AAC files. On my desktop and on my iPad, I download 24 bit lossless files since it's on those devices where I'm most likely to use a wired connection.