The Hiby R2 is the latest entry into the company's lineup of Digital Audio Players (DAP). This also comes in as their lowest cost option at $109 and comes in a tiny form factor. Despite this compact size, it still has a full color touchscreen, internet radio, two-way bluetooth, two-way USB DAC, and Wifi Streaming capabilities with included Tidal and Qobuz apps (as of Dec 10, 2020 with the version 1.1 update).
Hiby Unboxing
Impressions
In general, I find this Hiby R2 to be a great value at this price point for all the features it packs into such a small unit and on the budget price it sells for. There are some areas which I am not totally fond of, mainly:
+ The interface can be snappy at times and not responsive occasionally, though this seems to be improved a lot with the latest software update.
+ Navigating through the menus to do anything requires a lot of clicking through some very small buttons which don't always respond quite as quickly as I'd like.
+ Not a fan of it automatically defaulting to song-by-song list. I prefer to sort by Albums or Artists, as I listen to whole albums at a time.
+ I wish the default playback interface had larger album art work.
+ Qobuz was added this week, however it's quite buggy.
That said, I do think the overall sound is pretty solid for the price. I've used a few other cheaper DAPs in this price range I feel like this one is one of the better sounding from memory. It's not on par with my Lotoo PAW 6K or Cowon P2 Mk2, but better than how I remember the AP80 and AP60s.
The general sound signature is pretty neutral, though I don't think it extends as well as higher tier products, but mostly not noticeable. The main thing that I find that does separate the the higher tier gear and this one is subtle resolution improvements and staging qualities, but that said, I do think the R2 is quite usable and again, and improvement over similarly priced DAPs.
hi, did you try it as an USB Audio or Coax through USB-C digital transport with external DACs? thx Lacas
ReplyDelete