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!

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.

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.

I bought the Zen Air as a Bluetooth receiver to bring Spotify into my existing HiFi system, Cyrus amp & Mission loudspeakers, and am delighted with the result. It's not CD quality for sure, but then CD is in some ways inferior to the best vinyl. It is however appreciably better than a minijack out of an ipad. The high end is very bright & open, mid range very detailed. The low end however is lacking. My guess is 3dB down. My amplifier has no tone controls to easily compensate, so I shall need to make a choice soon. Installation & setup are extremely easy, turn it on & connect. Power is from USB. No adapter is supplied but as most people have plenty spare I think this is a good thing, saves unnecessary production. This is almost a superb solution to listening to Spotify on HiFi.

Exactly as described and great quality sound.

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.

Brilliant piece of equipment couldn't be without mine .100,%recomended for music 🎵 lovers .

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.

Ottimo, eccellente! Avevo letto alcune recensioni su questo piccolo gioiello e devo dire che la qualità è eccellente. Ascolto solo musica in formato Losless (flac, cue) e con questo geniale ricevitore bluetooth posso ascoltare e godermi un gran suono sul mio vecchio hi- fi. Lo amo ❤️

First off this is not a streamer as so many reviewers claim. It’s sort of frustrating to read reviews about how happy they are with this streamer. Not a streamer. A true streamer (WiiM, Bluesound, Sonos etc) will connect directly to your wifi or through a Ethernet cable and without Bluetooth. In the case of a true streamer you might only use your phones Bluetooth as a remote control to control what your listening to but that’s it’s only function since you will be pulling down the highest quality sound directly from the internet and accessing directly Spotify or tidal etc. from the internet and not from a more inferior Bluetooth compression sent from your phone. From the streamer next you would then amplify the signal and lastly to the speakers. I have this same set up with WiiM mini pro to Yamaha amp and it’s phenomenal. Truly is. Now what this iFi ZenBlue is and how well it works. This device is a Bluetooth receiver. No amp, no direct pulling down data from tidal etc. on the net. you must send it a Bluetooth signal, most commonly I would think and in my case as well from your phone. Or iPad, computer etc. After your Bluetooth signal has been received by the zen blue it must be amplified. Here is my set up in room 2 and it’s very very affordable. Before I had the iFi Zen I only used the very good Fosi BT20 pro, it serves both as a blue tooth receiver and an amp and fed my speakers from there with really great results. Simple as pie and I did not this iFi Zen at all. The Fosi by itself serves 3 functions. Receives Bluetooth, has a DAC and an amp on board. Small convenient and powerful. I paired it with a set of mid range bookshelf speakers (soon to be replaced) with high end bookshelfs and the sound was awesome. Zero regrets. Again this was just from my phone via Bluetooth to the Fosi receiver/amp But….Bluetooth compression does leave a lot to be desired and the DAC in the Fosi bt20 Pro is just ok. Good, passable but I wanted to try to tweak some more out of it. On to where it’s at now. I simply added the iFi Zen Blue receiver (it’s not a streamer) to the chain before the Fosi. The zen blue has a much much better Bluetooth chipset that supports Bluetooth 5.0 and better codecs like apt, aptx hd, and LDAC The codecs transmit much higher Quality audio. Resulting in clearer sound, wider soundstage and less compression artifacts. Plus the DAC in the zen blue is much higher quality and you can bypass the DAC in the fossi by using rca cables. From the zen output using rca cables I plug directly into the Fosi bt20 pro eliminating its need for the Bluetooth since the iFi zen blue has that part covered and improved as well as is it’s DAC since the iFi Zen is superior in that regard too and I just use the Fosi now as an amp which it is phenomenal at. Note: use any amplifier you choose. The Fosi BT20 Pro was the one I already had and was happy with it as a standalone. Make sure to turn off the Bluetooth receiver on the Fosi though if you go this route Simply hold volume button in 2 seconds. You won’t be using its Bluetooth anymore only the amp portion and also without its DAC either. Hook up speakers and bam your set. I couldn't wait to see if the hype was true on the iFi Zen Blue and I can report it is. It’s an amazing difference although you will most likely need a good mid to high range speaker to truly appreciate it otherwise like in this case the Fosi would get the job done. I only mention the Fosi BT20 Pro since I have one and it Performs very well given it size and price. I think k this whole setup without speakers was under $250!

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 %.

Estoy gratamente sorprendido por la calidad de audio que ofrece este receptor de Bluetooth, lo comparé con el Zen DAC de la misma marca y se llevan a penas muy poca diferencia de calidad, es importante utilizarlo con un equipo que soporte LDAC para ofrecer la máxima calidad de audio, tengo un Samsun Galaxy S21 Ultra y maneja muy bien este formato, desafortunadamente IOS, no tiene soporte para este formato, pero puedes utilizar un transmisor de alta calidad como un Fiio u otra marca de alta resolución, cómpralo no te vas a arrepentir.