Disclaimer: Shanling sent the Q1 to me for a review at Headfonics. That you can read here: Shaling Q1 review. I paid nothing for it and have enjoyed it immensely. It is a pre-production unit in special reviewer purple. Production versions look different. They also come in boxes.

If you prefer YouTube to reading, here is the same review in video format. Cool!

The Q1 is smaller, cheaper, and, at normal listening levels, it sounds just as good as the M2X. Sure, it lacks the M2X’s rubber port gaskets, balanced output, wifi, Tidal (and on and on and on), but its simplified graphical and physical UI are just what my doctor ordered.

Click here if you’re keen on seeing how the Q1 performs in RMAA.

Relevant links:
ohmage to the Cayin N6ii
ohmage to the Fiio M6 Hi-Res DAP
RMAA: FIIO M6 24-BIT RMAA: SONY ZX300 24-BIT
RMAA: COWON PLENUE J 24-BIT
RMAA: ASTELL&KERN AK70 MKII 24-BIT
RMAA: SONY NW-WM1Z 24-BIT
RMAA: GLOVEAUDIO A1 24-BIT
RMAA: HIFIMAN MEGAMINI 24-BIT
RMAA: ONKYO DP-S1 RUBATO 24-BIT
RMAA: ASTELL & KERN AK70 KAI (RYUZOH MOD) 24-BIT
RMAA: ASTELL&KERN AK70 24-BIT
RMAA: THE BIT AUDIO OPUS#1 24-BIT
RMAA: SHOZY ALIEN GOLD 24-BIT
RMAA: COWON PLENUE D 24-BIT

Specifications:
Screen: 2,7 inch 360x400 touch screen
System: Touch OS by Shanling
Weight: 136,8g
DAC: ESS Sabre E9218P
Battery life: up to 21 hours (depending on usage)
Deep standby: up to 20 days (depending on usage)
Charging time: 2 hours (depending on usage)
Battery capacity: 1100 mah
Storage: up to 2TB micro SD card
Audio formats: APE, FLAC, ALAC, WMA, AAC, OGG, MP3, OPUS, WAVE, AIFF, DSF, DIFF
Output port: 3,5mm jack headphone output
Output power: 80mW @32Ω
Output impedance: <0,2Ω
Channel separation: -78dB
Recommended headphone impedance: 8-300Ω
Frequency response: 20-40kHz
Distortion: 0,004%
Signal to noise Ratio: 118dB
Ground noise: <3,2uV (High Gain) <1,5uV (Low Gain)
Dynamic Range: > 105dB
Hi-Res support: up to 384kHz / 32bit, DSD64 & DSD125
Bluetooth: Two-way Bluetooth 4,2
Bluetooth Codec: Two-way LDAC, AAC, SBC, Transmit only aptX

Haptics and build: ohmage and porridge

The Q1 is more compact than a slimline Aiwa MD player. Heck, its footprint is smaller than a minidisk cassette and is only about three times thicker. Unlike a HX100, its buttons are easy to reach, and sized for adult fingers. The tracking back button falls right under the index finger, the play/pause button falls right under the middle finger, and the tracking forward button right under the ring finger. The one fly stirring in the ointment is the ambiguous iconography behind its play/pause button, which sure as not, looks like a stop/start control for a portable recorder.

The Q1’s headphone jack is centre aligned along the bottom edge. This ensures that headphone cables droop directly from the player in a clean parabolic arc to your ears. Top-aligned ports force the headphone cable to double back behind the player and hook on or stab random stuff in front of you, which can damage both the player and plug.

Thanks to its curved bottom, the Q1 feels great in the hand. But on a table, it spins like a top. Still, the Q1 is buttoned up pretty tight. If not for its protruding glass screen, I reckon it could take a spill or two from your kitchen table. Its back is hollowed from a single piece of metal, and its large buttons sit atop solid plinths. Glass screen aside, it is ready to be rough handled.

The Q1’s screen is pretty low resolution and isn’t great for browsing photos. But, its colours are reasonably crisp. Viewing angles are sufficient enough to keep text and art legible for most viewing, but gosh if it doesn’t wash out pretty fast when held at an angle. In every aspect, it is superior to the screens in Cowon’s D2 and Onkyo’s DP-S1. Even when scrolling fast, image tearing is minimal. Conversely, when browsing two or three layers deep in the UI, the Q1 stammers a bit.

Speaking of UI, while easy as pie to learn, and reliable whilst jogging from home to work, its icons are straight from Windows XP. They are ugly and a poor match to the Q1’s playful exterior. But they are the right size for easy touching. And, they are perfectly placed for fingers of all sizes. Behind them is a responsive touch/swipe engine. A few screens are confusing, hide too much, or display incorrect information. An example of the latter is ‘You’re The One For Me’’s place in my Frequent list. I’ve never played it on any portable device, let alone the Q1, and I’ve not listened to it more than a handful of times on any device. How it nabbed spot one on my frequency list constitutes a conspiracy on the order of 9/11.

I’ve tracked the Q1 at near twenty hours of playback with a good salad of use cases. Sure, you can do better, but it is more than enough to get through a day of work and the commute to and fro.

Its Bluetooth functionality is awesome. You can dual it up as a receiver for your iPhone and plug in your favourite tethered earphones, or send signals from it to your favourite wireless buds. The latter can get up to 50 metres from the Q1 before the signal quality goes kaput. That’s almost as good as an iPhone, so cool beans.

Kitsch: ohmage

This bad boy is pre-production. If you want to see how the full package looks, check out any review from February on. It’s generally no-nonsense, if styled a bit joke-ily. Its easy to suss GUI and reliable button array are great. The chrome accents are a bit kitsch, but installed in such a solid player, they are nothing but a bit of eccentricity.

Storage: porridge

You’ll have to pony up for a micro SD card because the Q1 lacks internal storage. I’ve been using 32GB Toshiba beasts of speed and reliability, and 200GB Sandisk dogs of surfeit and self-destruction. The Q1 flawlessly gets on with both.

Battery life: ohmage

I’ve tracked the Q1 at near twenty hours of playback with a good salad of use cases. Sure, you can do better, but it is more than enough to get through a day of work and the commute to and fro.

Sound: ohmage

I look at sound quality a bit differently to many reviewers out there. If a device does what it sets out to do, and performs well within its category by keeping hiss low, nailing gapless playback, and keeping current-to-voltage ratios high, it gets good marks from me. If it does all of that whilst providing a unique signature, dayum!

The Q1 hisses a tiny bit more than an iPhone SE, making it almost perfect for the most sensitive earphones on the market. And, it spits perfect current into low-Ω headphones and earphones. This ensures great frequency response and stereo performance no matter what’s plugged into it.

Recently, I’ve tested a few mid to high-end players that return worse measurements than the Q1, a fact about which I recently argued at length with a high-profile reviewer. If sound quality means how it makes you feel, the Q1 isn’t as good sounding as Cayin’s N6ii, but if sound quality is measurable as a percentage of deviation against the original signal, then the Q1 basically shows up players as high up the scale as the AK380.

Even with a minimum slow filter engaged the Q1 belts out music at a foot-tapping pace. There’s not a real comfy chair bone in its body. And that is the biggest bone I have to pick with it. I’d much rather soften its top end with a DAC filter than EQ. The good news is that the Q1’s EQ is robust and easy to use.

As you can see, the Q1 keeps up incredible stereo pressure across the spectrum through a variety of loads. IMD and THD distortion top out at 0,052% under the extreme load of an Earsonics SM2. Driving the current-hungry but voltage shy Audio Technica ES7, the worst distortion the Q1 puts out is 0,0089%. Obviously, both are totally inaudible. Jitter is nominal for a player in its price range, and as low as many high-end DAPs on the market today. At normal listening levels, SNR, stereo separation, and DR drop, but only commensurately to the volume differential between MAX and comfort.

Objectively, the Q1 is impeccable and among the best DAPs I’ve tested. It also sounds good, but it is obvious that Shanling didn’t put much effort into really tailoring its output for a specific sort of sound. Whether peaky and open, or dark and rich, I wish they had. Yes, I prefer the latter, but that preference isn’t what drives the desire for a more unique sound signature. For whatever reason, high-end DAPs tend to deliver the more unique signatures. Oftentimes this comes coupled with unique distortion patterns, and more. The Q1 sounds like a better-measuring iPhone. That means: near perfection, but it means very little character, even after applying DAC filters, EQs, and the like. I love the DAP, and I know that technically, its sound is top-notch. But, like many if not most audiophiles, I pine for a DAP that advertises itself along many audio avenues, including a unique and tailored house sound. Unfortunately, the Q1 totally lacks a house or brand-painted sound.

End words

Its few flaws in UI and haptics aside, the Q1 is the best DAP I’ve reviewed in recent memory. It performs almost without flaw. And, while it lacks a unique sound signature, it sounds great. Its battery life is good, and it is robust, easy to use, and generally responsive. You can even use it as a tethered or wireless DAC for your phone or computer. The Q1’s got it where it counts; better yet, counting up to its price point doesn’t take that long. It’s awesome.

ohmage: 4
porridge: 2