This is a review and detailed measurements of the HIDIZS portable USB-C DAC and headphone dongle for phones which don't have headphone jacks anymore. I purchased mine back in October of last year for US $36. Amazon sells it now for US $43. HIDIZS' own website has a new version (?) called S1 and say it sells for US $25.
The HIDIZS has a bit more "bling" to its dongle with twisted cable and fancy "hi-res" sticker:
The cable is certainly more flexible than what I have seen with other dongles. The reputation of HIDIZS is that of a premium brand so let's see how it does in measurements.
USB-C Dongle Audio Measurements
As I normally do, I tested the dongle on Windows 10. It is plug and play there so if you wanted to, you could use it on your laptop just as well. Here is our dashboard view:
We see that the maximum output is just 1 volt. That will hurt it in power department with high impedance headphones. And is half as much as what we normally see in desktop DACs.
THD+N and hence SINAD (signal over noise and distortion) at 91 dB places it in the second tier of all DACs tested:
It comes out ahead of sme dongles like Google Pixel, but behind our class champion, the Apple dongle (SINAD of 99 dB).
We have plenty of noise in our 1 kHz FFT spectrum above and the same shows up in jitter test:
This is typical of these dongles though.
Signal to noise ratio at max volume is barely enough for CD/16-bit content:
When we reduce the output to 50 millivolts to gauge noise level for sensitive IEMs, score is not that great:
So you may hear hiss and noise in those situations.
High noise level hurst intermodulation+noise graph versus output level:
Worst showing is in linearity test:
This indicates truncation of 24-bit samples to 16 bit which may be a compatibility issue with Windows. Then again there is that weird behavior around -28 dB which every other DAC normally nails.
Most important measurement is power versus distortion+noise. Here is that with 300 ohm load:
Overall noise and distortion is decent but we just don't have much power at just 3.4 milliwatts.
Testing with much lower impedance of 33 ohm yields:
We get more power as expected but still not a whole lot of it.
Output impedance is a very good 1.8 ohm:
EDIT: original review had the incorrect output impedance above.
Back to power, here is how the HIDIZS compared to other dongles at 300 and then 33 ohm:
Frequency response is nice and flat:
Headphone Listening Tests
Starting with Sennheiser HD-650, performance was just "OK" with anemic bass as the power measurements predict.
Switching to Hififman HE-400i resulted in a bit more power but likely more distortion too as it sounded bright with again, very anemic bass performance.
Conclusions
I see nothing in the measurements or subjective experience to justify the premium for this dongle. It will likely sound fine with a sensitive IEM but based on same standards I use for testing, you are better off with $9 dongles from phone vendors than paying extra for this. So I can't recommend the HIDIZS.
My sample is available for sale if anyone is interested.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
The panthers are complaining that they like to see more of their kind and asking me to take them to the Seattle Zoo. Rounding up this many animals for a trip like this requires a lot of extra hands which I need to hire. So please donate generously using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
The HIDIZS has a bit more "bling" to its dongle with twisted cable and fancy "hi-res" sticker:
The cable is certainly more flexible than what I have seen with other dongles. The reputation of HIDIZS is that of a premium brand so let's see how it does in measurements.
USB-C Dongle Audio Measurements
As I normally do, I tested the dongle on Windows 10. It is plug and play there so if you wanted to, you could use it on your laptop just as well. Here is our dashboard view:
We see that the maximum output is just 1 volt. That will hurt it in power department with high impedance headphones. And is half as much as what we normally see in desktop DACs.
THD+N and hence SINAD (signal over noise and distortion) at 91 dB places it in the second tier of all DACs tested:
It comes out ahead of sme dongles like Google Pixel, but behind our class champion, the Apple dongle (SINAD of 99 dB).
We have plenty of noise in our 1 kHz FFT spectrum above and the same shows up in jitter test:
This is typical of these dongles though.
Signal to noise ratio at max volume is barely enough for CD/16-bit content:
When we reduce the output to 50 millivolts to gauge noise level for sensitive IEMs, score is not that great:
So you may hear hiss and noise in those situations.
High noise level hurst intermodulation+noise graph versus output level:
Worst showing is in linearity test:
This indicates truncation of 24-bit samples to 16 bit which may be a compatibility issue with Windows. Then again there is that weird behavior around -28 dB which every other DAC normally nails.
Most important measurement is power versus distortion+noise. Here is that with 300 ohm load:
Overall noise and distortion is decent but we just don't have much power at just 3.4 milliwatts.
Testing with much lower impedance of 33 ohm yields:
We get more power as expected but still not a whole lot of it.
Output impedance is a very good 1.8 ohm:
EDIT: original review had the incorrect output impedance above.
Back to power, here is how the HIDIZS compared to other dongles at 300 and then 33 ohm:
Frequency response is nice and flat:
Headphone Listening Tests
Starting with Sennheiser HD-650, performance was just "OK" with anemic bass as the power measurements predict.
Switching to Hififman HE-400i resulted in a bit more power but likely more distortion too as it sounded bright with again, very anemic bass performance.
Conclusions
I see nothing in the measurements or subjective experience to justify the premium for this dongle. It will likely sound fine with a sensitive IEM but based on same standards I use for testing, you are better off with $9 dongles from phone vendors than paying extra for this. So I can't recommend the HIDIZS.
My sample is available for sale if anyone is interested.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
The panthers are complaining that they like to see more of their kind and asking me to take them to the Seattle Zoo. Rounding up this many animals for a trip like this requires a lot of extra hands which I need to hire. So please donate generously using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
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