There have been a lot of questions about this DAP and the Hiby R6 Pro. I had the same questions, so I did the only sensible thing and got both.
Both DAPs arrived about 2 hours apart, and I've only had them for a couple days at this point, so keep in mind that I've barely had enough time with them to form coherent opinions. However, they did each make some strong first impressions that I felt were worth sharing here:
The first thing I noticed about the Opus is that it sounds excellent. It comes preloaded with a trio of 192kHz jazz tracks, and they are absolutely clean with an open and detailed presentation. I listened to these on my Stellias, and it was readily apparent to my how the Opus #2 earned a reputation for good sound quality. I'll need to spend more time with tracks I know before I'm comfortable generalizing about performance, but there's certainly a lot of promise here.
Unfortunately, the second thing I noticed about the Opus is that the software is a hot mess. Seriously, it's bad. The default player/navigation is OK, but since I only had 3 songs on the player it was no time at all before I went looking for Tidal (or anything else). One thing that really concerns me: is there no search function??? By the time I get a large library onto the Opus, I hope it's easy enough to find what I want to hear.
You have to pull down a menu, click on Settings, then click "Streaming" just to find out that there are no pre-loaded streaming apps (e.g., no Tidal or Spotify). There is a generic "NetOpusPlayer," but it feels more like a barebones tool for testing at the factory than a finished product that belongs on your DAP. I was able to locate the FLAC files on my NAS, but browsing the file structure was frustratingly slow, and after clicking "play" it took something like 2-3 seconds for the player to indicate it was even trying to play the song. It worked, and it sounded great, but the whole process was clunky to the point that it's not something I expect to ever use again.
Meanwhile, the first thing I noticed about the R6 Pro is how much more it feels like a complete, polished, feature-rich product. It's well-built, looks and feels nice, and is as easy to navigate as any other Android device. Operating it feels like operating a phone without the phone part. It even comes preloaded with a calculator, calendar, clock, and you can set a custom desktop image. Nice!
There are no included music files on the R6 Pro (really, Hiby?!), but my slight disappointment with that decision evaporated as soon as I opened the Google Play store, downloaded Roon Remote, and gained access to my entire music collection. Roon won't work outside my home, so next I downloaded Tidal, which allowed me download tracks for offline use; I queued up half a dozen albums.
So, with next to zero effort on my part, I had hundreds of quality tracks ready to go anywhere, and thousands more readily accessible from anywhere with a WiFi connection. I've been listening to downloaded Tidal content via Noble K10s and absolutely loving that combo. The sound quality of the R6 Pro is at least "very, very good," though not flawless. My WiFi at home sucks (old router), and when my connection dropped I picked up some noise out of the R6, but otherwise it has been perfectly quiet with no noticeable interference.
I'm not convinced the Hiby will keep up with the Opus in terms of pure sound quality, but I'm also not convinced it won't. Perhaps the most damning indictment of the Opus is that I haven't cared enough yet to find out. I've been too busy to bother jumping through all the hoops of side-loading apps and filling up both players with FLACs.
I'm liking the Hiby enough that it's already an easy recommendation for me at this price point, especially if you want to stream music and appreciate an easy-to-use DAP that is stuffed with features and capabilities. If, on the other hand, sound quality is king and your primary music source will be your own collection on however many SD cards, then the Opus is a strong contender.
I'm liking the Hiby enough that it's already an easy recommendation for me at this price point, especially if you want to stream music and appreciate an easy-to-use DAP that is stuffed with features and capabilities. If, on the other hand, sound quality is king and your primary music source will be your own collection on however many SD cards, then the Opus is a strong contender.