FiiO KA17 DAC and amplifier, black

The most powerful "dongle"?

Today's Hi-Fi market is overwhelmed with a huge variety of portable headphone amplifiers. But few of them offer high performance while maintaining a usable size. The KA17 amplifier has this unique feature, offering up to 650mW of power and weighing less than 35 grams. In addition, it is equipped with two latest-generation ESS ES9069Q chips and AHX AAA 78 amplifier chips. It also offers PEQ (personalized equalizer) settings, a professional 16-core XMOS XU316 chip, separation of digital and analog circuits to prevent possible interference, two gain settings and more. There's just one small catch, to unlock the full 650mW of power you need to plug the amp into a secondary USB-C power supply and turn on the so-called Desktop mode on the side. Without it, the KA17 offers "only" 300mW of power, which is amply sufficient for listening on all smaller, less demanding headphones.

Quality workmanship.

FiiO has been strongly committed to the quality of workmanship of its devices for many years. Over time, the quality has been increasing and the KA17 is a great example of this. The entire body is made of aluminium. On the front is a 0.91-inch LED dot-matrix display that intuitively displays playback information and you can use the buttons to adjust various settings such as screen orientation, digital filters and more. There's then a USB-C port on one side for music source and power when using normal mode.