Special thanks to William from HiBy for sending samples of these two DAPs along for review. Your continued support is greatly appreciated.
I have a very soft spot for HiBy’s R6 Pro. The original R6 Pro, released many moons ago, was my first ‘high-end’ DAP, and I remember the plaudits it used to get when stacked up against the ‘established’ brands at the time for innovative features and outstanding software integration.
Interestingly, the original R6, which preceded the R6 Pro, wasn’t too shy on features either, and represented excellent value in an all-round package for what was then a very affordable price.
Fast forward to 2025 and the R6 family is still very much together, having evolved into two new DAPs that I could easily see dominating their price brackets this year. Granted, competition is far fiercer today in the sub-$500 and sub-$1,000 brackets respectively, and cost-conscious buyers expect far more bang for their buck. DAP makers like HiBy are thankfully listening.
The R6 Evolution
I won’t spend too much time tracing the lineage of the new R6 Pro Max and R6 III, only to say that they are both evolutions of their previous iterations (R6 Pro II, reviewed here, and the original R6 III, reviewed here).
There’s nothing radically different to them, but at the same time, incremental upgrades like a much larger battery in the R6 Pro Max and flagship CS DACs in the new R6 III address some of ther shortcomings of their predecessors and bring both DAPs not only closer to each other in performance, but closer to the multi-kilobuck tier too.
At a glance, and without even reading this review, I can already tell you that if you were in the market for the older versions of either DAP, the new versions are a no-brainer buy. In fact, if you already own the older versions, I’d be strongly tempted to upgrade to the newer versions. Put another way, the resale hit will be far smaller than the upgrade benefits.
I’ll cover each of these DAPs in far more detail in the following pages, giving them their fair due, but for those who just want to know the highlights at this point, I’ve listed them here:
R6 Pro Max
- New dual ESS Sabre ES9039MS Pro flagship DACs (replacing the AK4191EQ and dual AK4499EX from the R6 Pro II)
- New 4-way independent power supply system with an upgraded 8200mAh battery for extended runtime and 40W PD 3.0-compatible fast charging
- New 8-way IV amplification and ‘flagship-grade’ analogue audio components (albeit without the choice between Class A and AB amplification)
- New 6GB RAM and 128GB ROM storage (up from 4GB and 64GB in the R6 Pro II)
R6 III (2025)
- New quad Cirrus Logic CS43198 flaghsip DACs (replacing the dual Sabre ES9038Q2M DACs in the original R6 III)
- New switchable Class A/AB amplification with battery performance improvements (up to three hours more runtime in Class A balanced mode compared to the original R6 III)
As you can see, the changes to R6 Pro Max are more significant than those to the R6 III, but I’d put both in the evolution rather than revolution basket. If you want a revolution in sound performance, you’ll still need to upgrade to HiBy’s flagship delta-sigma DAP, the R8 II, which I’ll be comparing to both of these DAPs in this review.
Continue to R6 Pro Max…
