Is It Worth It? XDUOO POKE II DAC/Amp Review

The video is in Arabic.

Hey everyone,

My first time with an XDUoo product: the POKE II DAC/amp. Thanks to my brother Hussain, who owns it. Dual CS43198 DAC chips (Cirrus Logic’s flagship) and an AD8397 amp. Outputs: 4.4 balanced and 3.5, with support for PCM up to 384 kHz, DSD256 and MQA. Bluetooth 5.0 with LDAC and aptX HD. A 4000 mAh battery: about 8 hours on USB and 12 hours on Bluetooth, and it works as a power bank. It puts out 700 mW at 32 ohm balanced according to the company. It was $390 at the time of the review.

Who is it for?

• Anyone with lots of IEMs and headphones, or high-end ones, who wants a portable DAC/amp that does it all.

Strengths

• Neutral with a very slight touch of warmth, pure and natural.
• Layering is excellent, separation is 10 out of 10, and detail retrieval is one of its strengths.
• The bass is among the best I’ve heard in performance.
• Zero noise in normal mode with every IEM and headphone.
• Huge power for its size: it drives every IEM and about 99% of headphones.
• It supports UAC 1 and UAC 2 (consoles, computers and phones), with a mic and an info screen.
• It suits almost any sound signature.

Weaknesses

• The treble rolls off early: it stops around 17000 Hz.
• It’s covered in glass front and back: it picks up fingerprints and breaks if dropped.
• All the EQ modes cause hiss with sensitive IEMs.
• No 2.5 output, and it needs a driver on Windows.

Verdict

It’s expensive, but I think it’s the best portable DAC/amp with all these features, as long as you have IEMs or headphones that deserve it.

Note: this review is from 2023, so the price may have changed.

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