When it comes to budget audio equipment, the audio community should be quite familiar with Fiio brand. Fiio products often packs great specs with affordable pricing. The Fiio uBTR or μBTR or micro BTR is currently the most affordable Fiio Bluetooth audio receiver.
But why Bluetooth audio receiver? There are multiple reasons to have a Bluetooth receiver and reasons to not have a Bluetooth receiver. But with the current trend of not having a 3.5mm headphones jack on the flagship phones, getting a Bluetooth receiver might be a great alternative from using a USB-C/Apple Lightning jack to 3.5mm headphones jack. The largest benefit of having a Bluetooth receiver instead of an adapter is you do not need to add extra wear to your phone's USB-C/Lightning port and it is easily replaceable or upgrade.
Bluetooth Version: 4.1
Bluetooth Codec: SBC, aptX, AAC
Amplifier Chip: TPA6132A2
Mic: Yes
Charging: USB Type C
NFC: Yes
Headphones Out: 3.5mm stereo
Battery: 120mAH
Battery Life: About 9 hours
Surprisingly, the uBTR comes with a USB Type-C connector for charging, this is great as the uBTR is often required to be charge for music lovers, there are no need for making sure you had aligned the connector correctly to the charging port. To add on the good news, you are able to charge the uBTR while still playing your tunes, this is great if you are intended to use it to convert your home speaker into a Bluetooth enabled speaker as you do not need to stop your music while charging it. There are no USB Audio feature as the uBTR does not comes with a dedicated DAC.
For volume adjustment there are 2 dedicated button on the uBTR, there are no delays or lags while adjusting the volume. Pausing the music can be done with a short click on the power button, to skip track you could press and hold the volume button to trigger the action. There's a 0.5-1 second delay for controlling the music behavior (pausing/skipping) which is still quite reasonable. One thing I felt a bit weird is to skip to the next track I will need to press on the - volume button instead of the + button. The + volume button will trigger the previous track instead.
The audio tonality is quite different from that I remembered from entry level Fiio products, the uBTR does not have any coloration over any frequencies. There are some peak and harshness around the mid-high frequencies and it could make long period listing quite fatiguing.
But why Bluetooth audio receiver? There are multiple reasons to have a Bluetooth receiver and reasons to not have a Bluetooth receiver. But with the current trend of not having a 3.5mm headphones jack on the flagship phones, getting a Bluetooth receiver might be a great alternative from using a USB-C/Apple Lightning jack to 3.5mm headphones jack. The largest benefit of having a Bluetooth receiver instead of an adapter is you do not need to add extra wear to your phone's USB-C/Lightning port and it is easily replaceable or upgrade.
Specifications
Bluetooth Chip: CSR8645Bluetooth Version: 4.1
Bluetooth Codec: SBC, aptX, AAC
Amplifier Chip: TPA6132A2
Mic: Yes
Charging: USB Type C
NFC: Yes
Headphones Out: 3.5mm stereo
Battery: 120mAH
Battery Life: About 9 hours
Equipment
During this review, we will be using iPad mini 2, iPhone 8 as music source, KSC75 with PCWork Audio Cable mod and UE900s with Oyaide MMCX cable.In the Box
- Fiio uBTR receiver
- Documentations
- USB Type-C charging cable
Basic Operations
Operating the Fiio uBTR is rather straight forward. To turn on, just hold down the power button for roughly a few seconds and you will get a rather cringy, low resolution welcome tone (some goes to turning it off). Bluetooth pairing is really smooth, once the uBTR is turned on it will be discover able from the phone's Bluetooth device selection screen. Alternatively you could also pairing it using NFC. However, sadly, Apple haven't discover how to implement NFC Bluetooth pairing on iDevices yet, so this will be left out from the review.Surprisingly, the uBTR comes with a USB Type-C connector for charging, this is great as the uBTR is often required to be charge for music lovers, there are no need for making sure you had aligned the connector correctly to the charging port. To add on the good news, you are able to charge the uBTR while still playing your tunes, this is great if you are intended to use it to convert your home speaker into a Bluetooth enabled speaker as you do not need to stop your music while charging it. There are no USB Audio feature as the uBTR does not comes with a dedicated DAC.
For volume adjustment there are 2 dedicated button on the uBTR, there are no delays or lags while adjusting the volume. Pausing the music can be done with a short click on the power button, to skip track you could press and hold the volume button to trigger the action. There's a 0.5-1 second delay for controlling the music behavior (pausing/skipping) which is still quite reasonable. One thing I felt a bit weird is to skip to the next track I will need to press on the - volume button instead of the + button. The + volume button will trigger the previous track instead.
Audio
First impression while playing the musics, not too bad at all. There the resolution of the musics are well delivered, there are some minor or close to none compression can be easily heard even using an IEM. The separation of each musical instruments and vocals are well defined on slow paced musics but it can be cluttered when it comes to fast paced musics, the audio soundstage is pretty well for this price point too.The audio tonality is quite different from that I remembered from entry level Fiio products, the uBTR does not have any coloration over any frequencies. There are some peak and harshness around the mid-high frequencies and it could make long period listing quite fatiguing.
Conclusion
There are many entry level Bluetooth audio receiver out there but what makes this stands out compare to other is at this price point you'll get a rather decent audio quality, USB Type-C charging port and NFC pairing capabilities. This could be one of the easiest recommended entry level Bluetooth audio receiver in the market at the point of this article being written.
For more information: Fiio μbtr Product Page
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