FiiO BTR17

The BTR17 is FiiO's top Bluetooth DAC and headphone amplifier: a pocket-sized device that receives music from your phone over Bluetooth and drives your wired headphones, and that also works as a USB DAC for a phone or computer. Its Qualcomm QCC5181 chip with Bluetooth 5.4 supports aptX Lossless, which carries CD-quality sound without data loss from phones that support it, as well as LDAC, aptX Adaptive and AAC. Over USB an XMOS XU316 chip accepts up to 768 kHz/32-bit and native DSD512, and two ESS ES9069Q DACs feed a THX AAA 78+ amplifier with 3.5 mm and balanced 4.4 mm outputs. In desktop mode you plug a separate USB power supply into a second port, so the battery is spared and the balanced output rises to 650 mW into 32 Ω, enough for many full-size headphones; on battery it gives up to 300 mW. A pressable volume knob, a 1.3-inch colour screen and a 10-band parametric EQ in the FiiO Control app or on FiiO's website make it easy to adjust. It weighs about 73.4 g, the battery lasts about 8 hours with LDAC, and a leatherette case is included.

• aptX Lossless and LDAC over Bluetooth 5.4
• 2 × ES9069Q, THX AAA 78+, up to 650 mW
• USB DAC up to 768 kHz and DSD512