Shanling ME5 headphone AMP & Streamer

OUR VERDICT

The Shanling EM5 is a bit of a bargain considering the price it is being sold at compared to what it can do. You get a lot of value here with a DAC, headphone amplifier, pre-amp, local media player, wireless connectivity, and tons of I/O. It is a proper all-in-one device for the headphone enthusiast who has a modern digital set up in their home or office.

Not everything is perfect for me though. The choice of going Android over something like Chromecast is understandable given the local media player physically embedded.

However, it places a lot of emphasis on Shanling’s engineers to keep it chugging along, and it is already an old garden walled version. If at some point it can be included with Google Home and Roon integration and a tall rather than wide touch panel that would lift it to the next level of compatibility.

The sound quality though is very good indeed. It is an old-school AKM sound, one that brings a bit of fun and joy to music, especially good for modern pop and rock and with a solid emphasis on vocal presence. The power is enough for most headphones but pleasingly, gentle enough to work very well indeed with sensitive IEMs.

Honestly, the EM5 is a solid catch-all modern media component system and given a lot of these multi-media devices sell for much higher it represents a refreshing value-based approach also.