I finally received the new Xduoo X2s DAP a few days ago and wanted to give some first impressions and a quick review on it.
It has a really nice form factor without sacrificing usability. The buttons are layed out nicely and have a good click. The volume buttons on the side are a little rattlly though, but you most likely won’t notice that in normal everyday use.
On the front are all 3 playback buttons plus a back/home button. You navigate menus using the next and last track buttons and confirm with play.
The menu is pretty straight forward. It’s a pretty simple player and the menus have the following options/layout:
-
‘music note’
->All Songs (shows all songs sorted alphabetically)->Artists
->Albums of selected artist (songs are also sorted alphabetically)
->Albums->Genres
→ Artists of selected genre
->Albums -
‘EQ’
-Rock
-bass
-pop
-Jazz
-Classical
-soft
-custom (6 bands with -6 to +6 adjustability in 2dB steps)
-folder (folder structure of your SD card)
-playlists (need a playlist file, you can’t create playlists on the X2s)
-settings
-languange
-create playlist (searches for playlist file)
-repeat
-repeat off
-repeat all
-repeat folder
-repeat 1
-shuffle
-brightness
-sleep timer
-off timer
and other options and information
-‘play button’ (shows playing screen)
The DAP puts out a substantial amount of power for its size. The volume goes from 0 to 31 and powers my KPH31i to very loud volumes at 13 already.
It also powers my DT1990 easily.
The sound is pretty clear and seperation is also pretty good.
It won’t outclass desktop dac amps but for a small and cheap player it seems to be the best in it’s class.
I also had the Fiio M3k and this Xduoo beats it in almost every category imo.
The only problem I had was music tags. It couldn’t properly read FLAC tags. So you can’t find the music accoriding to the genre or artist. The same goes for AAC/ M4A files except it could read the genre tag with that format.
So I ended up converting everything to MP3 since I won’t use crazily revealing headphones with that DAP anyways and just wait for a firmware update to fix that problem.
The battery also seems to last a long time: I acidentally left the player on the whole day while playing music (it doesn’t pause when you unplug headphones) and I only lost one battery bar.
The only other thing that might bother some people is the playing screen.
It only tells you the track name and how long the track is, so no artist or album info.
Here are a few pictures:
Size comparison for EU people:
Size comparison for US people:
If you have any questions, feel free to comment.
For a more in-depth sound quality analysis I need to give the device a bit more time.
Edit: Just found out that you can add songs to playlists on the device. Just hold the back button in the playing screen.
