Screen and battery life
It has a fairly wide 3.97 inch LCD screen for its compact size. The resolution is 800*480, same as the U8. The rather low resolution doesn’t bother me from using these since it’s not that bad, though they could have gone higher with the U6.
OLED screens from the U8 are no longer present but I suppose that was to reduce the production cost as well as reaching a longer battery time. In fact, the OLED screens were one of the reasons why U8 had a relatively short battery time and the touch sensors weren’t so practical to use.
Colorfly removed the extra OLED screens and brought back with the good old classic volume wheel, as well as increasing the battery capacity from 3400 mAh to 4600 mAh. The actual battery time on the U6 turned out to be visibly better than the U8. Not huge, though. Right on top of the volume wheel sits a small light indicator that blinks when the volume is getting adjusted. It lights up as blue which matches pretty nicely with the device color.
U6 has a USB Type-C charging port and charges a bit faster than most other players. Slightly slower compared to the U8 but that should be due to the larger battery on the U6.
The hardware
Briefly explaining about the specs, U6 is equipped with 4 x ES9318 chipsets, which is having 8 decoding channels that could directly play DSD512 and PCM32 bit tracks. Other than that, U6 has a spec of 2GB RAM / 64GB ROM, one microSD slot for up to 256GB, and 3.5mm unbalanced / 3.5mm Pro balanced Phone Outs. Also, the 3.5mm unbalanced plug on these also serves for optical output and line output.
Been a while since we’ve seen 3.5mm balanced players, right? I was also mildly surprised to see Colorfly moving on from the popular 2.5mm balanced to the least common 3.5mm balanced. Besides, this is actually my first time using the 3.5mm balanced output. Maybe they could of keep the original output or just go for 4.4mm? Giving props to Colorfly for including conversion cables for both 2.5mm and 4.4mm male plugs, though going for 3.5mm balanced is still not the happiest move for me.
Balanced, but the all-new 3.5mm Pro
Although the 3.5mm balanced plugs aren’t so convenient these days, these plugs are actually called “3.5mm Pro”, which is a new yet advanced standard that differs from the old 3.5mm balanced plugs. Colorfly states that U6 is the first portable player to use this new standard and to have an ideal balance between size, audio quality, and durability.
Well, I do agree with Colorfly’s statement. 2.5mm plugs are convenient but fragile, 4.4mm plugs are durable yet bulky. Could 3.5mm Pro be the next standard for balanced plugs? We’ll keep our fingers crossed. Besides, I can’t really complain when it comes to sound quality. U6 is packed with powerful performance and intensive musical details. My expectations weren’t so high since I thought this would be a lower model from the U8, but a wrong guess. Let’s talk more about the sound a bit later on.
Next page for EQ / wireless / UI