While it is as small as a robin, the new Hidizs S8 Pro Robin thankfully doesn’t start pecking furiously at anything vaguely red coloured in its sight and is therefore much milder in character than its winged namesakes. Jokes aside, the new S8 Pro is a very small portable DAC which works rather well and offers a 4.4 mm balanced output despite its diminutive size.
Disclaimer: I received a free unit from Hidizs for the purpose of this review. The S8 Pro Robin retails for $69. Additional info on the manufactuer’s website.
TL;DR: recap
| Pros |
Cons |
| + Great design and build quality
+ Incredibly small and portable + Super affordable + Output power is decent… |
– …but it is limited |
Rating: 8/10
Packaging & Accessories
The Hidizs S8 Pro Robin comes with a 10-cm USB-C to USB-C cable, which you can use with other devices as well thanks to an adapter to USB-A and another to Lightning.
Design & Build
The design of the Hidizs S8 Pro Robin fits in the general theme of these devices, with some unique twists. The first noticeable thing is the presence of buttons on the right hand side: there are two buttons which adjust volume, as well as a central button to play or pause music. At first I thought it was a knob, given how it’s circular, but it is not as it does not rotate (I asked the company and they said that it was originally designed as a knob, but then they realised this could cause issues with unwanted rotations, so they made it a button). The other noticeable bit is the fact that the sides have “wings” coming out of them; the company says that they look like a robin’s wing, but I’m thinking more of Batman here (so not quite the same Robin). The black colour definitely helps with the association, though there’s also a model in silver.
Another thing that is immediately evident is the Hidizs logo on the front, which lights up to show the type of media being played. There are also a USB-C port on the bottom and two jacks, 3.5 and 4.4 mm, on the top.
Build quality is very high, as is tradition from Hidizs. The body is made of aluminium, while the front and the back are covered in glass. Overall, the S8 Pro Robin looks and feels like a premium product despite the low price tag.
Features & Specs
The buttons on the S8 Pro Robin allow you to adjust the volume as well as to play and pause the music. This comes in very handy, especially if you want to use the device with a smartphone or a tablet which do not have a physical button to play or pause the music without turning on the screen. The volume is not adjusted on the DAC itself, but it involves the software on the host device.
By pressing both volume buttons at the same time you can switch to a different filter. There are six of them: high pass (red), non-oversampling (green), de-emphasis (whatever that is, blue), fast and slow (idem, yellow), low-latency and phase-compensated (violet), wide band flatness (white).
The S8 Pro is supported by a wide variety of operating systems: on top of Windows and macOS, there’s also Linux (though not officially, but I can attest it works perfectly!), Android, iOS, iPad OS and even Harmony OS, Huawei’s own operating system. As Linux is supported, it works perfectly well with the Steam Deck.
Hidizs S8 Pro Robin
|
| Input | USB (up to 32 bit / 384 kHz PCM, DSD256) |
| Suitable headphones impedance | N/A |
| Output impedance | N/A |
| Maximum output power | Single-ended output:
Balanced:
|
| Frequency response | 20 – 45,000 Hz |
| THD+N (@1 kHz) | 0.0005% (single-ended) 0.0006% (balanced) |
| SNR | 125 dB (single-ended) 128 dB (balanced) |
| Crosstalk | -74 dB (single-ended) -110 dB (balanced) |
The Hidizs S8 Pro Robin is built around two Cirrus Logic CS43131 DAC chips – the same we recently found in the SMSL DO200 Pro desktop DAC. The DAC also provides the amplification, which is why we have just 80 mW of power at 32 Ω on the unbalanced output (and double that with the balanced one, which makes sense considering we have two DACs providing 80 mW each). One small thing is that the company says that the max output is 2 VRMS, which however equates to 125 mW – I asked clarification on this and they said that the output is actually 160 mW, so I guess they just rounded down the VRMS figure.
Sound
I tested the Hidizs S8 Pro Robin by connecting it to my PC and using headphones like the IO Audio VOLARE, the Tin HiFi T5S and the OneOdio Monitor 80.
In terms of power output, the Hidizs S8 Pro Robin offers enough to drive most headphones without issues. It works well for headphones having relatively low impedance (up to 100 Ω) and, although it can drive models with higher impedance, you will probably notice that there will be changes in the sound due to the limited power available and the swings in impedance.
The sound is clear and clean, with no background noises at all. It is also perfectly neutral, as far as I can tell, with no discernible differences between the S8 Pro and other solid-state devices I have tried.
Final Thoughts
The Hidizs S8 Pro Robin is a very good device, even more so if you consider the price. It is robustly built, has an original design, it comes with a true balanced architecture and has a 4.4 mm output with enough power to drive most headphones without issues. All of this for $69, which is quite impressive and a testament to how far this specific type of device has come over the past few years.
