Review: Onkyo HA 200

One thing that annoyed me about the PHA-2: you can’t use it while charging. Most of the time I’m using it as a laptop DAC, and the thing constantly running out of juice got on my nerves.

So whether the PHA-2 can be powered over USB became a big question for me. Some people say it can, but mine can’t, so I had to email and ask…

Fine then, time to buy a spare.

I’d had my eye on the Onkyo HA200 for a long time. It’s just over 19,000 yen buying from Japan, roughly 900-plus RMB. I used Tenso for the forwarding and declared 10,000 yen on the customs form, and in the end it arrived with no tax…

Once it arrived I couldn’t help comparing it with the PHA-2. Personally I think the Onkyo wins on thickness and size:

And it doesn’t lose to the PHA-2 on ports either — everything you’d want is there.

I don’t really want to say much about how it sounds. A DAC can only do so much; the source and the earphones matter more. Still, there are a few things worth mentioning.

The HA200’s sound easily reminds me of the Sony PHA-1 and the FiiO E17. It leans warm, but the Onkyo’s amp section is a bit better, with a slightly wider soundstage. There’s some coloration, which suits pop. The amp part beats the PHA-1 a little.

Overall, though, it still can’t match the PHA-2. The PHA-2 is a high-quality cold-sounding unit, and it supports 192 decoding. If you have higher demands, the PHA-2 is still the better pick. For me, though, the gap in what a DAC can do isn’t that huge anyway.

Under Linux the Onkyo HA200 is easy plug-and-play with no problems at all, so it seems good enough for my use. After a few days of listening I found I quite like the thing. The detail in the sound is hard to notice, but at least on driving power it’s considerably better than the PHA-1.