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After completing new testing, we have all new picks: the Fosi Audio DS1 (top pick), Shanling UA1 Plus (budget pick), iFi Hip-dac 3 (upgrade pick), and Qudelix-5K (great if you need Bluetooth). Aluminium Brush Cutter Head
Many audio enthusiasts still prefer wired headphones, but few modern phones include a headphone jack, and the cheap amps built into tablets and computers may not deliver the power required to drive audiophile headphones.
A separate headphone amp with a built-in USB digital-to-analog converter (DAC) lets you use wired headphones with all of your mobile devices. We recommend the Fosi Audio DS1 because of its combination of great performance and affordability, but we also have suggestions if you need something more powerful, more affordable, or with Bluetooth.
This compact, affordable headphone amp offers impressive power through its balanced and unbalanced headphone outputs. But its volume buttons don’t sync with your mobile device’s volume controls.
This headphone amp is slim enough to fit into any pocket yet offers impressive power and a control app for tweaking the sound. But it lacks a balanced headphone output.
This large headphone amp is almost twice as powerful as our top pick and can run on a built-in rechargeable battery, but it feels almost like carrying an extra phone with you.
This Bluetooth receiver can also be connected as a USB DAC—one with impressive power, balanced and unbalanced headphone outputs, and many advanced features. But the controls are somewhat unintuitive.
If your high-performance headphones have an impedance of 100-plus ohms or a sensitivity rating below 98 dB, you may need an amp.
We tested only those headphone amps that are practical for portable use. We did not test larger desktop amps.
We tested the audio performance of these products using lab-grade professional equipment for more accurate assessments.
We used a variety of headphone and earphone types to be sure the amps we recommend will work well for everyone.
This compact, affordable headphone amp offers impressive power through its balanced and unbalanced headphone outputs. But its volume buttons don’t sync with your mobile device’s volume controls.
The Fosi Audio DS1 is about the size of a domino, yet it has enough power to get maximum performance from all but the most demanding headphones. This amp has a simple design with balanced and unbalanced headphone outputs on top, plus volume controls on the side.
The DS1 is powered off your mobile device via its USB-C port, and our testing showed that the battery drain is not significant. The amp’s metal enclosure and detachable USB-C cable should make the DS1 rugged enough for years of use.
The main downside is that the DS1’s volume buttons don’t sync with your mobile device’s volume controls. You have to adjust the two separately. However, since the amp remembers your previous volume setting each time you connect it, this isn’t that big of a problem.
This headphone amp is slim enough to fit into any pocket yet offers impressive power and a control app for tweaking the sound. But it lacks a balanced headphone output.
If you don’t want to spend more than $50, the Shanling UA1 Plus puts out plenty of power to drive most mainstream headphones, and it’s one of the smallest amp/DACs we’ve tested.
The UA1 Plus is powered off your mobile device via its USB-C port, and it has a single button to control playback and volume. Shanling’s helpful Eddict mobile app lets you fine-tune the channel balance and volume and choose between five different digital filters to change the sound profile (an option many audiophiles like).
The downsides are that the UA1 Plus lacks a balanced headphone output and the volume control is clumsy to use—though you can easily control the volume from your mobile device instead.
This large headphone amp is almost twice as powerful as our top pick and can run on a built-in rechargeable battery, but it feels almost like carrying an extra phone with you.
The iFi Hip-dac 3 is a whole different animal than our other picks. It’s much bulkier, but it’ll give you a few more clicks of volume than our top pick can, and it can run off its own internal, rechargeable battery—so it won’t drain your phone’s battery.
The Hip-dac 3 has both balanced and unbalanced headphone outputs, two USB-C ports, a bass-boost feature, and an old-fashioned (although comfortable, intuitive, and fast) volume knob. It’s the only one of our picks that includes MQA audio decoding, a controversial technology embraced by some audiophiles.
The downside is that the Hip-dac 3 is almost as large and heavy as a typical smartphone, so it probably makes sense only if you own a very power-hungry set of headphones or if you want to preserve every last minute of your phone’s battery life.
This Bluetooth receiver can also be connected as a USB DAC—one with impressive power, balanced and unbalanced headphone outputs, and many advanced features. But the controls are somewhat unintuitive.
If you want one device that can serve as a Bluetooth headphone adapter when you’re on the go and a USB amp/DAC when you’re not, the Qudelix-5K is an excellent and surprisingly versatile choice.
This Bluetooth receiver supports all of the leading Bluetooth codecs, offers balanced and unbalanced headphone outputs, has impressive power output, and works with a mobile app that provides a lot of advanced adjustments.
The unit has a built-in battery that charges via its USB-C port, as well as controls for volume, track skip, play/pause, and pairing (which we found a bit confusing to use). You can read more about its performance as a Bluetooth headphone adapter in this guide.
I have been writing about audio professionally since 1989. In that time, I have conducted more brand-concealed listening tests than any other audio journalist in North America (and probably the whole world) while evaluating a few thousand speakers, amplifiers, and other types of audio equipment. I am a member of the Audio Engineering Society, and I own a full suite of lab measurement gear for testing audio products.
Senior staff writer Lauren Dragan wrote previous versions of this guide and assisted in the product evaluations for this one. Lauren earned a bachelor’s degree in both music performance and audio production, and she spent several years in and out of top recording studios as a radio engineer and voice actor.
Wireless headphones can deliver very good sound quality, but it’s not the best sound due to the losses caused by Bluetooth compression and the compromises required to pack so much technology into a tiny space. Wired headphones generally deliver better sound for the same money, yet many smartphones don’t include a headphone jack—and some audiophile-oriented wired headphones require more power to drive them to satisfying volume levels than mobile devices and computers can muster.
You can address both of these issues by using a portable headphone amp/DAC that connects to your phone’s digital output—a USB-C connector on Android phones and the latest Apple iPhones, or a Lightning connector on older iPhones. You can also use an amp/DAC with computers and tablets.
Inexpensive dongle-type amp/DACs (like this Lightning adapter) are available at low cost, and for most headphones one of these will work fine. But it may not have enough power to drive headphones with a higher impedance (which is specified in ohms and defines how much resistance the headphones have to the flow of electrical current) or a lower sensitivity (which is specified in decibels and defines how loud the headphones play with a given amount of power). You can read more about headphone impedance and sensitivity on Shure’s website.
If you own or are considering purchasing headphones that have an impedance of 100 ohms or more or a sensitivity rating below 98 dB, a cheap amp/DAC dongle may not have enough power to drive them to sufficient volume levels. The same is true for the headphone amps built into phones, tablets, and laptops, which is why headphone enthusiasts tend to add a portable amp/DAC when listening to music from their mobile devices.
There’s one other possible reason to opt for a portable headphone amp/DAC: Many high-end, audiophile-oriented earphones use balanced-armature drivers, whose impedance rises greatly at high frequencies of sound. An amplifier that has high output impedance interacts with the earphones’ own impedance to change the sound, usually making the result somewhat dull and boomy. Even most cheap headphone amps have low-enough output impedance that this isn’t a problem. However, the output-impedance spec is almost never published, and few review sites (Wirecutter excepted) measure it, so there’s rarely any way to know for sure.
Audiophile headphones focus on delivering the best sound quality, period. We’ve tested hundreds of them and selected our favorites for specific uses.
We can’t test all the headphone amp/DACs on the market, but for each round of testing, we pick the most interesting and promising new models we can find. Here are the criteria we use to determine which models to test:
For our most recent round of testing, we auditioned 14 new headphone amps ranging in price from $15 to $330. That brings the total number of headphone amps we’ve tested for this guide to 47.
For the original version of this guide, we conducted rigorous listening tests in which three panelists compared 10 different amp/DACs at matched levels without knowing which products they were hearing—and in the end, they couldn’t hear a significant difference. In the few cases where one listener did note a specific character of sound in a certain model, the other listeners’ perceptions didn’t correlate.
So rather than attempt to describe tiny sonic differences we aren’t confident you’ll hear, we decided in subsequent evaluations to focus on more practical tests that would tell us how a particular amp/DAC would perform in day-to-day use.
First is a “power listening” test to see how loud the amps can get in a worst-case test: playing vocalist/saxophonist Camille Thurman’s version of “September in the Rain” (video), which is much less loud than modern pop recordings, through two difficult-to-drive headphones—the HiFiMan HE6se and the 600-ohm version of the Beyerdynamic DT 880.
Second, using an Audiomatica CLIO 12 FW audio analyzer, I measure the power output of each amp/DAC at max 0.5% total harmonic distortion into 32 ohms (a common impedance for headphones), as well as 250 ohms and 600 ohms, which are used in a few audiophile and professional models. Note that in amplifiers, doubling the power may seem impressive, but it yields only a 3 dB increase in volume, which is noticeable but not dramatic.
Next, I measure each amp’s output impedance, a resistance added as a primitive way to protect against short circuits and big jumps in volume when you swap headphones. Headphone amps with high output impedance can change the sound of earphones that use balanced-armature drivers, as well as some headphones with dynamic drivers. So we like to confirm that each of our picks has a low output impedance; in our latest test, the highest was just 0.25 ohms, which is insignificant.
Finally, I measure the USB power draw for each amp that doesn’t incorporate a rechargeable battery. Our testing has shown that these products seldom draw enough power from a phone to worry about, provided you charge your phone every night and listen for only a couple of hours every day. However, if you’re using your amp/DAC for several hours at a stretch, it might reduce your battery life by 5% to 10%.
This compact, affordable headphone amp offers impressive power through its balanced and unbalanced headphone outputs. But its volume buttons don’t sync with your mobile device’s volume controls.
The Fosi Audio DS1 is a leap forward in headphone amp/DAC design because, despite being priced well under $100, it includes balanced and unbalanced headphone outputs and has power output comparable to that of much larger amps. So it should meet the performance needs of most headphone-amp shoppers.
It’s compact, rugged, and user-friendly. The DS1’s form is chunkier than that of our budget pick, the Shanling UA1 Plus, but still slim enough to slip into most pockets. The slim metal chassis feels quite solid, and its detachable USB cable is easily replaced if damaged.
The DS1 features a USB-C connection, and the package includes a short USB-C–to–USB-C cable and a USB-C–to–USB-A adapter. The only controls are buttons for volume up and down.
Its performance is great for the money. The DS1 costs almost 40% less than our previous top pick, the EarMen Eagle (which is no longer sold in the US), yet it’s about 42% more powerful from its 3.5 mm unbalanced output, which produced 112 mW into 32 ohms. From its 4.4 mm balanced output, it’s even more muscular: 244 mW into 32 ohms. That’s enough to drive all but only two or three audiophile headphones we can think of.
The DS1’s power into higher-impedance loads is impressive from the balanced output and adequate from the unbalanced output. Into 250 and 600 ohms, respectively, output was 62 mW and 26 mW from the balanced output, 15 mW and 6 mW from the unbalanced output.
We found the DS1 amp more than powerful enough to drive typical headphones with pop music. In our power-listening test, it produced plenty of volume from its balanced output into the low-sensitivity HiFiMan HE6se headphones, and from its unbalanced output into the 600-ohm Beyerdynamic DT 880 headphones—but it was just barely listenable when driving the HiFiMan headphones from its unbalanced output.
The DS1 is powered off your mobile device. Running the amp at a moderate volume with Sony MDR-7506 headphones drew 0.12 amps from our laptop’s USB jack. That’s about three times the power draw of our budget pick, but it’ll only produce a noticeable amount of battery drain from your phone if you’re listening for several hours a day.
The DS1 handles PCM digital file resolutions up to 32-bit/768-kHz and DSD files in sample rates up to 22.8 MHz (DSD512). It doesn’t decode the MQA format.
The unit’s volume buttons don’t sync with the volume control on your mobile device. You must control each one separately. If the volume on your phone, tablet, or computer is turned all the way down, you’ll hear no sound from the DS1 amp. However, because the DS1 recalls your last volume setting each time you connect it, this probably won’t cause too much annoyance as long as you don’t turn your mobile device’s volume all the way down.
The LED feedback is baffling. There’s just one tiny LED on the DS1, which glows in six different colors and two brightness levels to show the format and output level. (It’s tough to figure out.) Fortunately, the unit worked fine for us right out of the box with no need to adjust anything other than volume, and if you want format information, you can probably get that from the source device.
This headphone amp is slim enough to fit into any pocket yet offers impressive power and a control app for tweaking the sound. But it lacks a balanced headphone output.
The Shanling UA1 Plus is a great choice if you want a small, capable amp/DAC that costs around $50. It’ll work well with almost all mainstream headphones and earphones, but audiophiles who have low-sensitivity headphones with balanced cables will be much better off with our top pick.
You’ll barely notice it in your pocket. The UA1 Plus is small—about a third the size and a quarter of the weight of the Fosi DS1. It includes a lanyard that makes this tiny amp/DAC easier to keep track of, or to attach to a key ring or purse.
There’s a single unbalanced 3.5 mm headphone output on top but no balanced output. On the bottom is a USB-C port. Shanling includes a detachable USB-C–to–USB-C cable that can be easily replaced if damaged, plus a USB-C–to–USB-A adapter.
A Mode button on the side lets you control play/pause and volume. The play/pause function works well, but the volume function is clumsy: To raise the volume, you must tap the button twice, then hold it down. To lower the volume, tap it twice, then twice again, and hold it down. The adjustment is also abrupt, so you run the risk of pushing the volume uncomfortably high by accident. You’re better off using your phone’s volume controls, which sync with the UA1 Plus.
This amp packs a lot of punch for its size and price. The UA1 Plus put out 78.6 mW into 32 ohms, which is lower than our top pick but about 39% more than our previous budget pick, the Hidizs S3 Pro. Into 250 and 600 ohms, respectively, output was 10.3 and 4.3 mW—not impressive, but more than similarly priced competitors could muster.
The UA1 Plus amp is more than powerful enough to drive typical headphones with most music. In our worst-case power-listening test, it was able to get the high-impedance Beyerdynamic DT 880 headphones up to a reasonable volume, but the low-sensitivity HiFiMan HE6se headphones were a bit on the quiet side. For comparison, the Fosi DS1 amp produced only a slight increase in maximum volume from its unbalanced input but delivered considerably more volume from its balanced output.
The Eddict app (for iOS and Android) gives you a little extra control. You can set volume in 100 steps, which is a much finer adjustment than your phone’s volume buttons offer. You can set high or low gain; the latter may give you a more usable volume range with high-sensitivity earphones. You can adjust the left-to-right channel balance.
You can also choose among five different digital filters, each of which produces a slightly different sound. This is a feature found on some audiophile DACs, and it’s something that audiophiles will enjoy experimenting with.
The UA1 Plus remembers any settings you make in the app, so if you switch to a different device that doesn’t have the app, your settings will still be in effect.
Like our top pick, this amp is powered by your mobile device. Running the amp at a moderate volume with Sony MDR-7506 headphones drew only 0.043 amps from our laptop’s USB jack, which is about one-third as much as our top pick drew. That’s a plus if maximizing the run time of your phone’s battery is important.
The UA1 Plus offers good digital-file compatibility: PCM digital audio files up to 32-bit/384-kHz and DSD at sample rates up to 11.4 MHz (DSD256). However, it doesn’t support MQA.
This large headphone amp is almost twice as powerful as our top pick and can run on a built-in rechargeable battery, but it feels almost like carrying an extra phone with you.
The iFi Hip-dac 3 is designed for audio enthusiasts. It incorporates a rechargeable battery that allows it to drive power-hungry headphones without draining your phone’s battery, and it produces substantially more power than our top pick. However, it’s bulkier and costlier than our other picks.
This amp/DAC is packed with features. In addition to the rechargeable battery, which is rated for up to 12 hours of play time, the Hip-dac 3 has 4.4 mm balanced and 3.5 mm unbalanced outputs, a bass-boost feature, two switches for adjusting gain, and two USB-C jacks (which allows it to be charged while it’s playing).
This is our only pick that supports the MQA format, but that format is available only through one major streaming service. The maximum digital resolution is 32-bit/384-kHz, which is less than the 32/768 resolution offered by the Fosi Audio DS1 and Shanling UA1 Plus—but only a few download and streaming services offer resolution greater than 24/192 anyhow.
This model also offers DSD in resolutions up to 11.4 MHz (DSD256)—again, that’s less than the DSD512 resolution available in the Fosi DS1, but there’s very little music produced in DSD512.
It’s powerful enough to drive almost any headphones. The Hip-dac 3 offers more power than our other picks. It produced 210 mW into 32 ohms from its 3.5 mm unbalanced output and 330 mW from its 4.4 mm balanced output. That’s just a 2.7 dB and 1.3 dB advantage, respectively, over the Fosi Audio DS1, but if you’re running a set of low-sensitivity headphones from the balanced output, it’s a difference you might notice.
The Hip-dac 3 enjoys an even greater advantage when paired with higher-impedance headphones. Into 250 ohms and 600 ohms, respectively, output was 153.3 mW and 63.9 mW from the balanced output, 38.1 mW and 15.9 mW from the unbalanced output.
This was the only amp powerful enough to get a good listening volume from both pairs of headphones in our power-listening test, producing a comfortable volume no matter which output or which headphones we used. The sound did distort when we turned the volume all the way up using the HiFiMan HE6se headphones and the balanced output, but turning the volume down two clicks on the phone eliminated the distortion and still sounded pretty loud.
This amp is relatively large and heavy. The Hip-dac 3 is more than 5.5 times as large as the Fosi Audio DS1 by volume and about 3.5 times as heavy. That’s a tight fit in a jeans pocket.
The package includes USB-C–to–USB-C and USB-C–to–USB-A cables.
This Bluetooth receiver can also be connected as a USB DAC—one with impressive power, balanced and unbalanced headphone outputs, and many advanced features. But the controls are somewhat unintuitive.
If you’d sometimes like the option to wirelessly connect your headphones and mobile device, the Qudelix-5K works as both an excellent, highly advanced Bluetooth headphone adapter and one of the best amp/DACs we’ve tested. You can read a full discussion of its Bluetooth capabilities in our Bluetooth headphone adapter guide; we’ll focus here on its operation as a USB DAC.
This amp/DAC has both balanced and unbalanced headphone outputs, a built-in rechargeable battery that got between 11 and 15 hours in our tests, and a USB-C port for charging and DAC connection.
It’s surprisingly powerful. The Qudelix-5K offers impressive power, especially for a product designed primarily as a Bluetooth adapter. From its 4.4 mm balanced output, it produced 254.8 mW into 32 ohms, 64.6 mW into 250 ohms, and 27 mW into 600 ohms. From its 3.5 mm unbalanced output, it produced 98.5, 16.1, and 6.7 mW, respectively.
In our listening tests, the Qudelix-5K always produced ample volume through its balanced output. Through the unbalanced output, the volume with the low-sensitivity HiFiMan HE6se headphones was tolerable, but a little quieter than we’d have preferred. The volume with the high-impedance Beyerdynamic DT 880 headphones was a little better—not what we’d call crankable, but enough for comfortable listening.
The Questyle app offers incredibly powerful audio processing. The mobile app for iOS and Android makes this amp/DAC one of the most versatile stereo audio products we’ve ever tested. You can fine-tune the sound with a 20-band graphic or parametric equalizer (or 10 bands with separate EQ for left and right channels), so if you have the patience, you should be able to get almost any headphones or earphones sounding just the way you like.
You can also access thousands of parametric EQ presets based on measurements of countless different headphones and earphones. The idea is that by selecting the proper EQ curve for your headphones, you’ll perfect their sound. We tried it with a few headphones and earphones, and the results were mixed—but headphone enthusiasts will find this option fun to experiment with, and all of the presets can be fine-tuned if you don’t like them.
Other app features include: the ability to select among eight different digital filters, each of which puts its own subtle twist on the sound; the ability to mix in ambient sound from the amp/DAC’s built-in microphone; and the option to engage a crossfeed function that makes the sound more like what you’d hear from speakers in a room.
The controls are somewhat unintuitive. Because this amp/DAC is also a headphone adapter, it has more control buttons on it—and they can be confusing. On one side, there’s a blue-lit button that controls power, play/pause, track skip, and Bluetooth pairing. A red-lit button on the opposite side controls volume up and down. The buttons are unlabeled; I had to keep looking at the manual to remember what they do.
The portable amp is a bit larger than our top and budget picks, but it has a metal clip on the back that attaches it to clothing. This will probably be a lot more useful when you’re using it as a Bluetooth adapter, as opposed to using it as a USB DAC that’s tethered to a mobile device. The package includes short USB-C–to–USB-C and USB-C–to–USB-A cables.
The maximum digital file resolution is 24-bit/96-kHz. All of our other picks far exceed that, but little of the music that’s available through download and streaming services is in higher resolution, and it’s very unlikely your ears could detect the difference. The Qudelix-5K also doesn’t support DSD or MQA, but those formats are of concern to only a handful of audio enthusiasts.
Most headphones are rated to deliver somewhere around 100 dB from a 1 mW signal, which is pretty loud. For reference, the World Health Organization recommends that the equivalent continuous sound level (or Leq) should be kept below 70 dBA for music played through headphones or limited to one hour at 85 dBA. You can read our thoughts on safe listening for more context.
For every doubling of milliwatts, you get 3 dB more output, so with a set of headphones rated to deliver 100 dB at 1 mW, you get 103 dB from 2 mW, 106 dB from 4 mW, and so on.
If you want a highly affordable option that’s good enough to power most headphones: The Anker A8195 is a dongle-type USB-C amp/DAC that works fine with typical headphones, delivering 17.3 mW into 32 ohms, and a reasonable 5-ohm output impedance. It was powerful enough to work okay with the 600-ohm Beyerdynamic DT 880 headphones in our tests, but it barely worked at all with the HiFiMan HE6se headphones we used. Its maximum resolution is 24-bit/96-kHz, and it has no support for DSD or MQA, but only serious audiophiles would want more resolution and formats. At a typical price under $20, the A8195 is a good deal.
One model that didn’t arrive in time for our latest testing round is the Questyle M15. We expect to receive it shortly and will give it a listen as soon as we can.
Below are some of the more recent or notable amp/DACs we’ve tested and dismissed. We also maintain a complete list of products tested for this guide.
The Apple USB-C to 3.5 mm Headphone Jack Adapter produces just 3 mW of power into 32 ohms, and less than 0.05 mW into higher-impedance loads, which is only about as good as the amps built into smartphones. For a few bucks more, you can get more than 50 times as much power from the Anker A8195.
The AudioQuest DragonFly Black, DragonFly Red, and DragonFly Cobalt are older designs that can’t match the power of our current top pick.
The pricey Clarus Coda seems aimed more at audiophiles wanting an affordable DAC than at headphone enthusiasts. Its measured output was only 15 mW into 32 ohms.
The EarFun UA100 is similar to our top pick, the Fosi Audio DS1, and typically priced about the same. The UA100 maxed out at 143.8 mW into 32 ohms, which is impressive but still falls short of the DS1’s performance.
The EarMen Eagle is a former top pick, but the company has exited the US market, and the Fosi Audio DS1 offers balanced output and more power for a lower price.
The FiiO K3 offers lots of power—214.1 mW into 32 ohms from the balanced output—but its chunky design with coaxial and optical digital outputs makes it better suited for use on a desktop or in a home stereo system.
The FiiO KA5 is interesting in that it has an alphanumeric display showing the format of the file being played, but it typically put out only about a quarter of the power of the Fosi Audio DS1.
The Fosi Audio DS2 actually puts out a little more power than the Fosi Audio DS1, and it’s typically about $20 less expensive. However, its volume controls go back to a very low setting every time you unplug it, so you have to raise the volume every time you plug it in. We found this extremely annoying and would gladly pay a bit more for the DS1 to get around it.
The Hidizs S3 Pro is a previous budget pick. We demoted it because it offers less power and features than the Shanling UA1 Plus, and because we worry about the durability of its hardwired USB cable. The only advantage it has over the UA1 Plus is the inclusion of MQA decoding.
The iFi Go Bar offers impressive power for its size: 300.1 mW into 32 ohms from its balanced output. However, it’s typically priced about four times as high as our top pick.
The iFi Go Link is a nice little amp with a hardwired cable. It beat the output of the Shanling UA1 Plus into 250 and 600 ohms, but it fell about 15 mW short into the much more common 32-ohm impedance. Also, we prefer a detachable cable so that you can change it if it’s damaged.
The Questyle M12 measured at just 40.6 mW into 32 ohms, so it fell well short of our picks—although it does support MQA decoding, which most of our picks do not.
This article was edited by Adrienne Maxwell and Grant Clauser.
Brent Butterworth is a senior staff writer covering audio and musical instruments at Wirecutter. Since 1989, he has served as an editor or writer on audio-focused websites and magazines such as Home Theater, Sound & Vision, and SoundStage. He regularly gigs on double bass with various jazz groups, and his self-produced album Take2 rose as high as number three on the Roots Music Report jazz album chart.
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