Shifting from iPod Classic to Q1, the difference is noticeable at the first beat.

The sound is as described in the specs and matches other online reviews.

Two-way Bluetooth is a blessing! I can use it as a wireless DAC and enjoy the music via wireless headphones/speaker at the same time.

I love the design and the buttons are perfect. The volume wheel is really handy. The interface takes a day or so to get used to and the screen is responsive enough. Screen gets a lot of bashing in the reviews in youtube, but I find it to work well.

I have been using it almost daily for the last 6 months and I easily get 15 hours of battery with a basic headphone. Most importantly, there has not been any noticeable damage to the battery life in the last 6 months.

I love it! Its always in my bag (a little too thick to keep in the pockets).

NOTE: A set of scratch guards are included in the box! please do not buy it separately unless needed. @Headphone team, please include the scratch guard in the "Box content".

Received the Shanling Q1 within 24 Hrs of Order!! Absolutely amazing customer service experience with Headphone Zone! Saved you as my Bookmark for many more purchases!! The product is a rightly priced pocket rocket and I am in awe with it.. The screen swipe experience definitely needs some work but audio output is worth every penny!! Thanks a bunch Headphone Zone for putting a smile on our faces with every tune through this.

This is my first Hi-Res player and I'm totally loving it. The build quality is top-notch and it is fully made of metal. It feels a little heavy for its size but that is totally acceptable. It also comes with a silicone case and a screen protector with it so double thumbs up to the brand for providing it. This DAP supports micro SD card up to 1 TB of size which I guess is more than sufficient to dump all your music files. A big shout out to the folks at HPZ for bringing such devices to India. Brilliant job HPZ and like always you guys rock.
Pros:
Build quality
USB Type C connectivity
Micro SD card support up to 1 TB
Silicone case and screen protector
Battery life

Cons:
User interface (could've been better)
Side buttons - one can accidentally press the button while playing the music.

I loved Shanling Q1 on first look. Small and very cute design, but weighs more than I thought from the looks. Not exactly a workout partner, but that wasn't my intention when I bought this. The button placements, including the cool volume wheel were really good for me. Amazing cute backcover that matched the color of the device and 2 screenguards too. Due to my pathetic screenguard installation skills, I lost one of them already though. The second one somehow stays on it. The USB type C cable looks sturdy and tangle free.
The device supports upto 2TB of memory card, fantastic. I inserted a 256Gb high speed one and the device scanned the 6000 songs - most of them 16bit - 24bit flac and the rest mp3, quick enough. the sound quality is amazing. The features are all fantastic. The 2 way bluetooth works really great. The synclink works decent, but the android app needs some good work to make it good.
Wifi, wifi transfer, DAC all of them works as expected. It came with software 2.1 and I was able to update via Wifi to 2.2. So great.
The only slightly disappointing part about this device was with UI. It has some minor issues. Sometimes the touch won't respond as well as we expect when we scroll or navigate. Also there is some minor issue with displaying album arts for certain files. I manage my music files regularly by adding proper album arts which works well on other devices. But quite a few of them don't display on Q1. But the ones that show up looks really good on the screen.
Overall: A really cool device that requires some software work on the UI. I absolutely recommend this device to beginner audiophiles.

Design is elegant and confident, volume buttons are easy to press but can be get used to.
Does everything perfectly what its supposed to, specifically sound wise.
Would have liked if there was an usb c to c but no worries.

Tested for a few days now and found these points after using it with KZ ZEX -
Not much diffrence if you are listening to 128kbps mp3.
But you will find diffrence the moment you switch to flacs or 320kbps or higher mp3.
Q1 is definitely heavy for its size, but that makes it feel so sturdy and yes the side buttons are too sensitive but thanks to settings, we can lock them while screen is locked.
Don't know if its just me, but I was hoping if we could get option of viewing videos on that small screen as well but I get it, q1 is focused on music only.
Also having wifi, we can not do much with it over internet. Only if Shangling can make spotify app for Q1 as spotify exposes its API to enable for devs to integrate spotify into custom apps.
But I guess I am demanding a bit too extra 😜
Happy with my purchase. Compared it with ipod 5.5 audio, which already was good enough and the results are in favor of q1 with all the guts this device have.
I am a bit new to audiophile community and hence still exploring so I am not able to provide information from an audiophile's perspective for now.

First impression after using it for 6 hours:
1. Easy set up
2. Sounds great via on ordinary headphones/earphones too.
3. Connected via AUX to Bose 500 (home speaker), the effect was mind blowing.
4. If you have a large collected of lossless music, go for it!

Thank you Headphone zone great experience about packaging and fast delivery and received shanling Q1 dap build quality is excellent & it's sound quality is next level..once again thank you whole team..

Update : There is a problem in playing ALAC files , this system hangs and I have to restart it....hope they Shanling can sort out this issue soon in future software upgrade
:( , Time being am Cutting 1 star

First thanks to Abhishek, he cleared my doubt that this is not an update to shanling UA2 , it's for convenience, no review said this :)
Then why I buy this?! :) Wait

1.Support upto 2 TB , my music library is really big and so am not able maintain free space in my OnePlus 7 , 128gb
(bought 256 gb samsung sd card, Q1 don't have internal memory)

2. Type C charging and also I can connect my shanling UA2 (have to enable DAC option)

3. SyncLink - this is the important feature I bought this, you can control this Q1 from your phone by installing SHANLING MUSIC APP in your phone , for this you have to enable bluetooth & SyncLink options in wireless setting
In this mode it's working in LDAC codec, what else you want :)
Intially I planned to buy a BT DAC for my presonus Eris 3.5, but cuz of SyncLink Q1 feature I shifted my focus from TOPPING TC3 DAC (6K) , now am using Q1 as BT DAC as well as my DAP, charge last for 15+ hrs fro my usage

4. Can pair your bluetooth headphones , but there is a slight disadvantage in this option it supports aptx only not aptx HD , so if have a LDAC supported BT earphone it's well and good , according to me this is the only con, am having OnePlus bullets 2 which won't support LDAC

Apart from all these utilities the sound quality also good infact very good it's clean and detailed, it's sounds better than my 10 yr old ipod classic , you can also use DIGITAL FILTERS, but to be honest am not able find the difference between the presets filters :)
It's sound signature is NEUTRAL AND BALANCED, DETAILED

Iems checked - fiio fd1 , tripowin tc 01, moondrop ssr , Blon 03

moondrop drop ssr - I activated HIGH GAIN option, seriously it requires more power and the volume level is 75 to 80 - but the sound is just great

Fiio FD1 - it's sounds very balanced , even though I tried to increase the Bass :) same for blon 03 and tripowin

Only con is the UI handling, but you may used to that in 2,3 days :)

My thoughts : if u have large HI-RES library and you don't have enough money to buy DAC enabled flagship mobile :) and you can use this also as BT DAC as well as pair your BT earphones
jus go 4 this blindly

As a previous user of shanling M0, I wanted to experience the q1, as almost majority of the specs are the same between them but latter was better in terms of sound quality according to the reviews. Well, after I bought, and listened to some music for first two to three days, I thought it was an okay update and not much different than M0.. But.... Seriously after two days, it somehow sounded different.. Don't know how and why, may be"burning period!!!".. I can say it's really a superb sound experience overall.. sound stage is wider and crisp compared to M0.. physically, little bigger and a little bit on a heavy side.. and one more major problem is, the volume and play/pause buttons, which will get pressed accidentally when operating on power/volume scroll wheel button.. other than that no complaints.. overall, It's a beautiful DAP.. I AM IN LOVE WITH Q1.. 👌👍❤️

Excellent quality. Worth every penny. Biggest advantage is the USB-C port. SD card allows for more flexibility. Design is 🤩