Most of the DAC/amp combos we tested—both in our original tests and our summer 2020 update—sounded really similar, so most of the models listed below will work just fine from a sound-quality perspective. What differentiates them is the combination of features, ease of use, and price. But really, excluding a few duds listed at the bottom, if you prefer any of these designs over our picks, that’s okay.

Apogee Groove: During our blind tests, the USB-powered Groove sounded a bit softer in the mids and a tad more coarse in the highs, but still quite good. It offers a lightweight, easy-to-use design plus its own digital volume control. The Groove works with Mac, PC, iOS, and Android devices, but like the DragonFly Red, it drains power from mobile devices.

AudioQuest DragonFly Black: The sound of the DragonFly Black was nearly identical to that of the DragonFly Red—which is to say, great. We heard lots of detail and sparkle on the highs, agile lows, and an even, spacious sound in the mids. But the DragonFly Black is less powerful than the Red. AudioQuest claims 1.2 volts or 4.5 mW, which is really more suited for efficient earbuds.

Centrance DACport HD: The DACport doesn’t offer very much volume in its low-gain mode, and the switch to toggle to the high-gain mode is recessed, so you’ll need to track down a paper clip to flip it. The plasticky design feels cheaply made, especially compared with the competition. Overall, it sounded fine, if a little quiet, but nothing about the DACport HD overwhelmingly impressed, especially for the $150 original price.

FiiO Q1 Mark II: Landing in the middle of the pack, the Q1 Mark II sounded perfectly acceptable to us. It had a little too much low end that made male vocals sound slightly recessed, and it didn’t quite have the sparkle and life in the highs that our top picks exhibited.

miniDSP IL-DSP: The IL-DSP offers EQ settings, which might be amusing for some folks to fiddle with, but the amp isn’t exceptionally powerful and the initial setup is a bit of a complicated chore. The IL-DSP sounds fine with lower-impedance headphones, but the experience is better geared toward someone who enjoys fussing over sound profiles as a hobby.

Monoprice Monolith USB DAC 29512: If you’re looking to save a few bucks, this is a solid little device. It’s not quite as powerful as our picks and it may not get firmware updates as frequently, but if you don’t care about MQA or newer encoding, that may not matter to you. We do wish the volume control were a dial rather than buttons with predetermined steps, but that’s really a minor quibble. If you find you want a budget DAC/amp to drive headphones under 250 ohms, the 29512 will work just fine.

Monoprice Monolith Portable Headphone Amplifier 24460: The most powerful model we measured for our spring 2020 update, the 24460 was able to get even more volume out of 600-ohm headphones than the iFi Hip-dac (23.3 mW). It sounds great, feels well-built (if a bit heavy), and has a three-year warranty. The problem is that it’s twice the price of the iFi Hip-dac. While the 24460 does have some neat features for you to noodle around with (like filters and Sensaround), we found that, with well-tuned headphones, we didn’t need all that.

NextDrive Spectra X: While we appreciate the diminutive size of the Spectra X, we don’t recommend it for use with mobile devices (like a phone), as it draws power from your device. Apple users will also want to skip, as the USB-C version is incompatible with iOS, and updating the Camera Adapter can make the USB-A version incompatible as well. As for Android and PC laptop use, the Spectra X fares fine on 32-ohm gear. But for higher-impedance headphones above 250 ohms, you may find you won’t get enough volume. For PC/Android users, if you like the design, the Spectra X is fine, but our picks are more powerful and can decode more formats.

Sony PHA-1A: The PHA-1A’s sound quality consistently ranked near the top of our lists, but it sounded slightly more two-dimensional than our top picks, with a bit of midrange coloration. Ultimately, it was the PHA-1A’s larger, heavier build and shorter battery life that nudged this model out of the winner’s circle.

We encountered a few DAC/amps that our panelists didn’t like, and we recommend skipping them, even if they’re available at a discount:

Creative Sound Blaster E5: This model consistently ended up toward the bottom of our panel’s blind-test rankings. While the overall sound wasn’t objectionable, our panelists liked most everything else we heard better. Brent described the sound as “somewhat dull, crude, and edgy when compared to the others,” and John and Lauren agreed. Lauren also found it to have lower-end bloat and a more 2D sound quality than most of the other DACs.

FiiO i1: Since the i1 was made for Lightning iOS devices, our panel blind-tested this model against Apple devices. Surprisingly, the MacBook Pro and iPad Mini, through their built-in headphone jacks, and the iPhone 7, through the included headphone dongle, sounded nearly identical with the volume matched. We were able to hear a distinct difference between the i1 and the Apple devices, but our panel felt it was a lateral move: The i1 definitely sounded flatter, both in the frequency-response sense and in the spatial sense. The Apple devices were slightly more boosted in the lows and highs, but that made them sound more 3D. We all agreed that the i1 changed the sound, but we didn’t think that change improved the sound.

iFi nano iDSD Black Label DAC/Amplifier: This is more of a portable desktop device than a portable DAC/amp. There are two settings, measure and listen, which seem to mildly alter the low frequencies. When we turned the volume dial, we got some slight crackling noise, which shouldn't happen in this price range. Overall, we were disappointed, especially compared with how much we liked the Hip-dac by the same company.

JDS Labs C5D: The C5D truly surprised—and disappointed—our panel. JDS has a fantastic reputation, but the C5D was noticeably muddier, bassier, blurrier, boomier, and noisier than any of the other DAC/amps we tested, even though we tested it with its tone switch set to the neutral position. It’s the only model that our blind panel singled out as actively disliking.