iFi ZEN Air Blue - High Resolution Bluetooth Audio Streamer - Stream Hi-Res Audio from Spotify, Apple Music and More (RCA Output)

I have a hifi system I bought nearly 30 years ago. At the time I treated myself to the individual pieces as I could afford them and have swapped a couple of the units over time. For the last 20 years or so it has consisted of an amp, a cassette tape player, a 5 CD disc changer and some awesome speakers. But for at least the last 5 or 10 years, I really only listen to music on streaming services, in the car or though headphones/earbuds. I decided to look for a unit to add to my hifi that can stream music and play it through my amp and speakers. And this ifi unit does the job perfectly, and for a pretty reasonable price. Looking around, many of the items offered cost hundreds of pounds but at just £99, this seemed very affordable. The unit itself is pretty compact and looks sleek and attractive in the white finish with black panel. It isn’t the size of a standard hifi unit, so I don’t have to remove one of my existing units to fit it into the cabinet I have; it just sits on top of one of the other pieces. Okay, it doesn’t have the symmetry of being big and rectangular and black, like all the other units, but that doesn’t really bother me and I think it looks fine there. Set up was really quick, simple and straightforward. Take it out the box, plug the power cable into the unit, then into a mains adapter. The power cable ends in a USB plug so you’ll need to have a spare USB adapter plug to hand. It doesn’t come with its own RCA cables so you’ll have to have some of those spare too. But you just put the R and L cables into the sockets in the back of the unit and then connect to your amp. Bluetooth connection to your phone takes seconds; turn the unit on and off begins searching. Go to Bluetooth settings in your phone and tap the new device there called ‘ifi Hi-Res Audio’ and it instantly connects and you are good to go. The sound is clean and clear and just great! I’m really happy with this purchase. It does exactly what I want and brings my hifi up to date. Which is nice for me but I’m also considering my son. He’s at university now but in a few years, when first gets his own place, I’m thinking of passing on the hifi for him to use there - a sort of heirloom, I guess. But now it is something he’ll be able to use everyday, rather than a dinosaur that requires a room full of old CDs and tapes!

Modern tvs have terrible sound, they’re so thin. I didn’t want a sound bar as I have quite a nice hi fi and I was happy running a 3.5mm to RCA cable from my old tv. But my lovely new Samsung doesn’t have a 3.5mm output so I tried a headphone DAC I happened to have. It was ok, but playing music through Spotify on the tv was flat and lifeless. Enter the iFi Zen Air Blue. What a transformation. The unit feels like a quality item, its design is nice and it’s pretty compact. Setup took moments and I’m enjoying a much better sonic experience. Music through the tv is bold, lively and involving again. I’m really happy with this, the only thing I don’t like are the red and blue flashing lights when I power down the connected device, it’s like the LAPD have arrived.

Tried to run this through Alexa. Big mistake. The Ifi console only thereby shows a blue dot and not the Ifi symbol (it knew). The rendering of the Bluetooth transfer through a great amp and really great big vintage Bose speakers sounds reasonable via simple Bluetooth link (which this unit gives linking via a third party), but without depth, clarity and is actually jarring... This cannot be right , I thought.. Disconnected Alexa and played Spotify directly through my phone and the console suddenly lit with a white dot and the blue Ifi air symbol and the same tracks sounded heaven sent. Audiophilia isnt my bent (it really isn't), but the difference is chalk and cheese. This piece of kit seems to work best played directly from phone Bluetooth (Spotify, Amazon Music whatever... Forget Alexa, play direct between your phone via Bluetooth. It's a seriously decent bit of kit for purifying sound between your phone and a decent hifi. It's great with music apps. It really is.

Purchased this device such that music stored on my PC could be played on my valve amplifier. With this in mind it does the job well. It easily connected to my PC with which I use a TP-Link UB500 USB BlueTooth v5 device. IF there are any issues with connecting via BlueTooth then for sure it will be the inadequacies of Windows. The very annoying thing about this product however are 2 things: 1) It does NOT come with a power supply which I find cringingly bad. Therefore I will say that this device DOES NOT WORK OUT OF THE BOX. It is not the cheapest of such products either. 2) The power supply lead is way too short. Again, more cost saving. The power lead is only 2ft (600mm) long, hence optimal placement of this device is HEAVILY restricted. Such a lead should in my opinion be a minimum of 1.5 to 2.0 meters long. The power lead as it is, is stupidly short. Really annoying. To extend it one must purchase a USB-A extension lead. So, because of 2 poor decisions purely based on saving a few pennies on a mid-range product the manufacturer has lost themselves a 5 star rating and if I could've made it 3.5 stars just to rub this point home I would have! Hence a good product let down by unnecessary penny-pinching. Therefore add £15 to £20 to the list price for a suitable PSU and an extension lead. Yes 'iFi' your customers CAN ADD UP!!!

Exactly as described and great quality sound.

It's expensive but I have a high end audio system and sounds perfect with it.

I have a vintage NAD amplifier and needed to add a Bluetooth receiver so I could stream Spotify through my HiFi. This product allowed me to do that quickly, easily and with a quality of reproduction that exceeded my expectations by far. Possibly the best £99 I have ever spent.

Connected easy and sounds good, but Bluetooth is problematic. If controlling via phone it intercepts calls and plays them and any system sounds (alarms, notifications etc) really loud - first time this happened i nearly soiled my pants. No way to turn it off - confirmed by support, just have to turn off sounds and lower call ring volume, but I was quite happy with the settings the way they were. Returned, replaced with WiFi dac.

Realmente exelente, la configuración es muy rápida e intuitiva, calidad de sonido ,sin ruidos 100% hi fi

Works perfect, good sound

Perfect

De la vieille école des "idiophiles" 😂 je me suis tout de même mis, comme tout le monde à utiliser le Web pour passer de la musique.... Pouvoir enfin cumuler la praticité des tablettes et autres smartphones avec le son d'une bonne chaîne hifi est une révélation ! Car au niveau son, rien à voir avec un simple branchement sur la chaîne (avec le son compressé des fichiers audio informatiques). Il y a un réel "+" dans cette petite interface, les circuits et puces spécifiques ne sont pas un gadget. Je conseille à 150 %.

I shouldn't have had to buy this product. I owned it's big brother, the iFi Zen Blue V2, which is a couple of years older and also supports balanced output. But then I was an idiot when re-installing an integrated amp, and plugged the wrong power supply in the the V2, causing smoke signals and eau du plastique. Since I wasn't using balanced in this application, I was pleased to see this new Zen Air Blue at half the price. While waiting for delivery, I brought in a FIIO K9 PRO ESS I had because well, it can also Bluetooth. Hey, I guess I should explain that in my office (a real professional office, not at home) I decided I wanted sound, and I stream high-resolution from an iPad to an amplifier to speakers. Not cheap stuff, but good enough for critical listening. The weakest link in the system is the Bluetooth link over BT 5.1 for about 8 feet. Both the older V2 and the FIIO use external BT antennae and the Zen Air Blue does not. Everything is internal. Nevertheless, I'm getting BETTER connectivity with the new Zen Air Blue. This is exceptional. The Zen Air Blue is a very light box, and comes with a short USB-A adapter cable for power. I guess they expect you to use a spare 5V power supply. I had the 5V from the older unit so I just used that. Build quality of the unit is well - light plastic, but it doesn't need anything more than that. Two RCA outlets on the back, they work fine. Easy to hook up. Pairing was quick and easy. I can stream high res Qobuz or Apple music with no issues. The sound has no artifacts, and is very neutral. It seems to be every bit as good as the older by almost 2 years V2 if you are in single-ended use. I thought the FIIO was a bit warmer and smoother, but then the FIIO is an $800 buck desktop DAC/AMP which also happens to be able to stream Bluetooth. I use the FIIO to power headphones, not generally as a line-out unit dedicated to streaming. Yes, the Zen Air Blue provides streaming and LINE OUT, designed for volume control by other devices or applications. I run it into an AUX line in on my integrated amp. It does not need or want a volume control. In my use case, I set a volume I do not wish to exceed on the amp, but use the iPad to control volume all of the time. If this is the item you need, then it serves it's purpose very well. If you aren't sure you need to spend more money, then you don't need to.