It's not often I go looking at portable DAC/amps, yet I have somehow managed to put myself into a position of covering a few of these, which will be coming up on TechPowerUp. The FiiO BTR5 was the first of these, and the EarMen Sparrow is now getting its turn. Things have changed so much over the years, with such portable devices now almost assuredly high-res playback capable with analog headphones/earphones in the absence of 3.5 mm stereo jacks on phones. This created a market for digital audio players (DAPs), which are a hard sell unless you absolutely want a standalone music player on the go. Some, such as FiiO, saw a market for wireless connectivity which results in a larger and heavier form fact to cater to the battery inside.

EarMen, on the other hand, went with a different approach. There is no wireless connectivity, no battery, and no onboard controls of any kind. It aims to be more of an invisible guide to get not only the 3.5 mm jack back, but improve upon the cheap dongles by also throwing a 2.5 mm balanced output at it. All this comes in an extremely tiny form factor intended to be hidden in a pocket that also has your phone, and the cable does a U-turn behind the phone to have the outputs pointing up and out of your pocket for the headphones/earphones to plug into. Battery usage can be high, and not being able to charge the phone at the same time hurts as well. Look, I am no fan of the current trend of phones with their audio output. But those who don't want to go with true wireless stereo (TWS) or just Bluetooth in general will have to decide whether a wired-only approach is what they want, in which case the EarMen Sparrow is worth considering, or a hybrid Bluetooth receiver coupled with a DAC/amp is a good compromise, in which case this is not for you.

Then there's the use of the ESS9281PRO DAC, which ultimately delivers better output from most others, including the others I have here. MQA rendering is also a key feature here, so if you are in that camp, I suppose the EarMen Sparrow is definitely worth the money for you. I would have rather seen some onboard controls even if as simple as using haptic touch or a capacitive slider on the sides for volume control separate from the phone, which can help the DAC output be clean without affecting the amplifier gain. There are a few more compromises than I would personally like, but I have to admit that as a pick-up-and-use device you don't really think too much about, the EarMen Sparrow is absolutely fantastic at its job. I said it before and I will say it again: The listening experience from this tiny device is effectively no different for most headphones/earphones compared to a larger, powered DAC/amp combo or even a stack. So in that regard, I do acknowledge what EarMen was going for and that it is done well. It's just that there are better value offerings from others that also work off battery, including FiiO with the new BTR5 that just got announced with MQA encoding as well, in addition to Qudelix with the 5K that gets you a better app and more customization to where the EarMen Sparrow is quite niche and the asking price harder to justify.