iBasso DX50 Review

iBasso DX50 is a bit larger and heavier than FiiO X3. It has sharper edges and is not as polished. But it fits nicely in your pocket and we like the touch screen. DX50 can not be used as a USB-DAC with a computer, but have a coaxial digital output and both headphone and line output.

Even DX50 has a limited 8GB internal memory, but it can be extended with SDXC cards. iBasso ensures that the player can handle up to 2TB of additional memory, the day such a card will be available. In the current situation you´ll have to settle for the largest memory card at 128 GB.

Battery life is listed at 14 hours and the battery can be replaced. That means you can fill your pockets with extra batteries if you need to. The battery is the same as in the Samsung Galaxy S3.

Easy To Use?

The touch screen makes iBasso little easier to use than the FiiO and there's a physical gain switch with low, medium and high modes, which can be chosen depending on how power hungry your headphones are. The best signal/noise ratio can be achieved with high gain, but I think the music sounds a bit more controlled with the low gain setting. This, of course, depends a lot on your headphones.

However, I like that the player shows the song's audio resolution on the display.

Sound Quality

Most of the above is forgiven when the music starts. As with the FiiO player, it improves the audio compared to my iPhone 5 and paints a both airy and juicy sound. But there is indeed no significant differences between the iBasso and FiiO. And it's not unexpected as they have the same DAC chips. Yet I feel that iBasso has a slightly warmer, more controlled bass response, while being a little softer and lighter in the upper register. It is slightly more powerful, it keeps better control when playing loud, which can be important if you have more demanding headphones than the Klipsch Status I'm testing with.

When it comes to high resolution music, there are little nuances that distinguish it from lower resolutions. It´s quite obvious when going from high resolution back to low resolution after listening for a while. iBasso extracts that little bit extra in a convincing way and can play both classic and funky electronic music without blinking.