FiiO KA15 review: a delightfully retro DAC dongle that packs a punch

Is this little teal DAC one of the best headphone DACs around? You bet it is. The FiiO KA15 is the successor to the popular FiiO KA13, and it adds a small color display with a fun audio cassette-style animation during playback. It has high power output in desktop mode that enables it to drive even fairly demanding headphones, and it has both 4.4mm balanced and 3.5mm headphone outputs. The 3.5mm can also be used as an audio output.

One of the big pluses here is wide compatibility with smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktop PCs and handheld games consoles. For some devices such as iPhones you'll need to borrow a computer to configure the 10-band equalizer as FiiO's iPhone app doesn't connect to the KA15, but this is a relatively minor snafu.

I really, thoroughly enjoyed listening to all kinds of music with the KA15 ...