New generation of ESS chips have arrived and it sounds awesome SMSL D100 review
When I saw "ES9081" printed on the D100's spec sheet, my first instinct was to assume SMSL had quietly slipped a flagship chip into a $140 box and hoped nobody would check. That's usually how this goes with budget Chinese DACs. Big number, bigger claims, and a comment section full of people who never read a datasheet in their life arguing about which number wins.
So I checked. And here's the part that actually makes this review interesting.
The ES9081 is genuinely one of ESS Technology's newest releases, built on the same fourth-generation Hyperstream IV architecture that powers the actual flagship chips. But ESS didn't design it to chase measurement charts. They built it, alongside its sibling the ES9082, as a cost-reduced, bill-of-materials-friendly chip aimed at soundbars, AV receivers, powered speakers, and Class-D pre-amplifier controllers. Not boutique desktop DACs.
Not headphone amps for people who argue about cable directionality. Soundbars.
So the chip quietly doing conversion duty in your neighbor's AV receiver is the same chip SMSL just built an entire hi-fi component around. That's either an inspired bit of repurposing or a very expensive game of spec-sheet chicken, depending on how cynical you're feeling today.
And honestly? After living with the D100 for a while, I'm leaning toward inspired.
What You're Actually Buying
At $139.99, the D100 is a desktop DAC and headphone amp combo built around that ES9081 chip and an XMOS XU-316 USB processor running full 32-bit asynchronous transfer. On paper that gets you PCM up to 768kHz, native DSD512, and full MQA decoding, not just over USB like most budget units bother with, but across USB, optical, and coaxial alike. If you're still feeding an MQA-CD transport into this thing in 2026, SMSL didn't forget about you.
The headphone amp section is where the D100 quietly earns its keep. You get both a 4.4mm balanced output and a 6.35mm single-ended one, rated at 400mW into 32 ohms balanced and scaling down gracefully to 26mW at 600 ohms. That's not going to embarrass a proper desktop amp, but it's more than enough for the vast majority of dynamic and planar headphones people will actually plug into a $140 box. THD+N sits at a claimed 0.00035% on the RCA line out and 0.000621% on the balanced headphone output, with dynamic range around 116 to 121dB depending on which output you're measuring. Good numbers. Not "beat a $2,000 DAC" numbers, but genuinely good for the price.
There's also a small, quietly clever piece of engineering here: the D100 uses two isolated USB-C ports, one for data and one purely for auxiliary 5V power. Plug it into your phone as a mobile-to-desktop bridge and that second port means the D100 stops draining your phone's battery to run itself. It's a small thing. But it's the kind of small thing that tells you someone at SMSL actually uses these devices the way real people use them, rather than just speccing a product from a spreadsheet.
Build Quality
The chassis is CNC-machined aluminum, gold-plated connectors throughout, and a 1.66 inch tempered glass display up front that's genuinely nicer than it has any right to be at this price. SMSL got the D100 JAS Hi-Res certified too, for whatever ceremonial weight that carries with you. At 338 grams and roughly the footprint of a coffee coaster, it disappears on a desk in the way a lot of "compact" DACs promise and fail to deliver.
Nothing about it feels like a $140 product when you're holding it. That's not a small compliment in this category, where plenty of competitors still ship in plastic that flexes if you look at it wrong.
Sonic Quality
Here's where I need to manage expectations properly, because the internet loves to either write budget DACs off entirely or declare them giant killers, and neither is honest.
The D100 is not a miracle worker. It's not going to make a mediocre recording sound like it was mastered by Bob Ludwig, and it's not going to out-resolve a genuinely high-end DAC three times its price. What it does do, consistently, is stay out of the way. And for $140, that's rarer than it should be.
I spent a lot of time with acoustic and vocal-forward material on this thing, and it's where the D100 impressed me most. Something like Norah Jones' Come Away With Me comes through settled and composed, with none of the grain or edge you sometimes get from cheaper implementations pushed too hard through their DAC stage. Vocals sit forward and stable without smearing into the instrumentation behind them.
Move into something denser and more layered, a record like Radiohead's In Rainbows, and the D100 holds its composure impressively well. Instrument separation isn't flagship-DAC holographic, but nothing collapses into mush either, even during the busier moments. That's the ES9081's parallel-summing architecture doing real work, and it shows.
Where it starts to show its price is with genuinely large-scale orchestral or electronic material with huge dynamic swings. Something like a well-recorded Hans Zimmer score will reveal that the soundstage, while wide for the price, doesn't have the depth or the layered precision you'd get from something built around actual flagship silicon. It's a flatter picture.
Not a bad one. Just flatter.
But across the board, the noise floor is genuinely excellent. Sensitive IEMs stay hiss-free, which is not something I can say about every budget DAC/amp combo I've had on this desk.
The Competition
At this price, the D100 isn't fighting in a quiet corner of the market.
The FiiO K11 undercuts it at $129 and actually out-powers it, pushing 1400mW balanced into 32 ohms off a Cirrus Logic CS43198 chip. If raw headphone-driving power is your priority, the K11 wins that argument outright. What it doesn't have is the D100's full MQA decoding across every digital input, or that dual-USB-C battery protection trick.
So which one should you actually buy? Here's the honest split. As a DAC, the D100 is the more composed and transparent of the two. The ES9081's parallel-summing does something the CS43198 doesn't quite manage at this price, and it comes through as a slightly darker, cleaner background on the line-out signal. But as a headphone amp, the K11 simply has more to give. 1400mW versus 400mW into 32 ohms isn't a subtle gap, and if you're running planars or anything genuinely power-hungry, the K11 will drive them with more headroom and less strain. So it comes down to what you're actually plugging in. Feeding a separate amp or powered speakers off the line out? Take the D100. Driving demanding headphones straight from the unit? The K11 has the muscle, and it's $10 cheaper too.
The Fosi Audio ZD3 sits above it at $179.99 to $219 and genuinely uses ESS's actual flagship chip, the ES9039Q2M, not the ES9081. And you can hear the difference in resolution, the ZD3 digs slightly deeper into a mix and holds a marginally more layered soundstage. It's a real, if modest, step up as a pure DAC. But that's the entire product. No headphone amp at all. So if you need one box to do both jobs, the ZD3 isn't even in the conversation, no matter how good its DAC section sounds. You'd be paying $40 to $80 more and then buying a separate headphone amp anyway. The D100 wins on value the moment headphone output matters to you at all.
And then there's SMSL's own DL100, sitting at $179.99 with a quad CS43131 setup, HDMI ARC, and Bluetooth built in. I'll be upfront: I haven't had the DL100 on my desk, so I can't tell you how it actually sounds next to the D100. What I can tell you is that on paper it's a spec monster for the money, four DAC chips, a genuinely broad input selection, and features the D100 doesn't touch. If those extras matter to you and you're comfortable spending the extra $40, it's worth putting on your shortlist as an alternative. I just can't personally vouch for the sound yet.
Verdict
The SMSL D100 isn't chasing a measurement war it can't win against its own flagship siblings. What it's doing instead is taking a chip ESS built for soundbars and AV receivers and proving that, in the right hands, "cost-reduced" doesn't have to mean "compromised." At $140, you're getting a genuinely composed, transparent-sounding DAC and headphone amp combo, one thoughtful engineering touch after another, in a chassis that punches well above its price bracket.
It's not going to replace your dream DAC. But it might just replace the $130 to $180 options you were already considering, and quietly outperform most of them while it's at it.
You can see more information about SMSL D100 here:
Pros
Composed, transparent DAC section that stays out of the way on acoustic and vocal-forward material, without grain or edge even at this price
Handles denser, layered mixes (tested with In Rainbows) without collapsing into mush
Excellent noise floor, genuinely hiss-free with sensitive IEMs
Full MQA decoding across every digital input (USB, optical, coaxial), not just USB like most budget competitors
Clever dual isolated USB-C design, one port for data and one for auxiliary power, so it doesn't drain your phone's battery when used as a mobile-to-desktop bridge
Both 4.4mm balanced and 6.35mm SE headphone outputs, enough power for most dynamic and planar headphones
Strong measured numbers for the price (THD+N as low as 0.00035%, 116-121dB dynamic range)
Build quality well above its price bracket: CNC aluminum chassis, gold-plated connectors, nice tempered glass display, JAS Hi-Res certified
Compact footprint that disappears on a desk
Beats the FiiO K11 as a DAC (darker, cleaner background) and undercuts the Fosi Audio ZD3 while also including a headphone amp the ZD3 doesn't have
$40 cheaper than SMSL's own DL100 while running the newer chip
Cons
Headphone amp power is modest next to the competition, 400mW into 32 ohms balanced versus the K11's 1400mW, so power-hungry planars or demanding headphones will feel the ceiling
Soundstage flattens out on large-scale, dynamically complex material (orchestral, Hans Zimmer-style scores), lacking the depth of true flagship-chip DACs
Not a giant killer, won't out-resolve genuinely high-end gear or fix a mediocre recording
Built around a cost-reduced ESS chip designed for soundbars and AV receivers, not a flagship part, so the "newest generation" framing shouldn't be mistaken for "best generation"
The Fosi ZD3 still edges it out slightly in raw DAC resolution if you don't need a headphone amp at all
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