EISA High-End Music Player 2021-2022 HIFI ROSE RS150 | "Most streaming DACs at the RS150's price point, and even above, don't provide anywhere near its mix of features, performance, aesthetics and build quality, and operational flexibility. It's also easy to listen to—a quality I find to be very important in a network music player. HiFi Rose could charge substantially more for the RS150 and I'd still give it a cracking review." - Sound&Vision
The world is changing. We’ve all experienced that dramatically in the past year. Audio is changing, as well.
It’s hard not to form initial impressions of the Hi-Fi Rose RS150 based on the way it looks, from its build quality to that graphic-filled full-width touchscreen display, but it soon becomes clear there’s more to it than meets the eye. The Hi-Fi Rose RS150 is an accomplished – and extremely flexible – player/DAC that will play everything from Bluetooth streams to hi-res content, and you can even install SSD storage to make it a complete library and player in one unit. The sound is striking, too, majoring on richness and detail that contribute to a very mature presentation. This is a decidedly impressive debut for the Korean brand.
The Rose 150B gave me many hours of great listening. I was impressed with the build quality achieved at this price point; both the fit and finish as well as the component selection were all at a level I would expect for a component costing at least double the price of the HiFi Rose RS150B. The system is incredibly flexible, and using it in both my office system as a preamp/streaming DAC and in my main system solely as a streaming DAC illustrates just how much flexibility this system has. The few quirks in the software are very mild, and I think will be overcome by the Rose team, perhaps by the time this review is published. Most importantly, Sean Kim achieved his goal: This unit sounds fantastic. I have never heard streaming quality like this before and thoroughly enjoyed exploring new music with the HiFi Rose. If you are in the market for a streaming DAC with or without preamp capabilities, I strongly recommend that you audition the HiFi Rose RS150B." - The Absolute Sound
