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“Kensei” is an honorary Japanese title given to swordsmen of legendary skill. The word translates to “Sacred Sword” and it’s iFi’s unrelenting commitment to being the best that it has focused on the masterfully crafted product that is iFi Kensei.
This is really a tool for audiophiles, so we’re going to get a little more technical than usual in this review, with an emphasis on keeping it accessible without getting too deep into the weeds.
iFi GO bar Kensei: Price and availability
The iFi GO bar Kensei is available for $449 from ifi-audio.com, Amazon, and other online retailers such as Sweetwater. Unlike the iFi Gold bar, this is not a limited run and will last for a while according to comments from an iFi representative on the iFi sponsored HiFi user forum.
iFi GO bar Kensei: Dry and fit
Unboxing a Kensei is an experience. It is housed in a beautiful, eco-friendly, carved wooden box. You get two premium braided cables (USB-C, USB-C to Lightning with USB-A adapter) and a leather case. No bigger than a USB flash drive, the GO bar is made from Kensei Japanese stainless steel and is deceptively heavy for its size. Its body has grooved edges, and while it attracts fingerprints like a magnet, it feels premium all around. It’s beautifully carved into the underside of the bar, but the face is where the thrills come from.
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On the face, you’ll find a panel with LEDs showing volume, audio format, frequency, and sound effects. On the right side, you’ll find the volume and settings push buttons, as well as the IEMatch switch. At the top of the device, you’ll find 3.5mm and 4.4mm headphone jacks, and at the bottom, a USB-C port that supports up to 32-bit/384kHz audio.
The Go bar Kensei gets a little warm during use, but it’s not a concern. Although it is solid and has a good weight, stainless steel is a bit soft when it comes to external wear and will show scratches and dents.
iFi GO bar Kensei: Features
The GO bar Kensei uses a High Resolution 32-bit Cirrus Logic DAC chipset. True Native® Playback of music formats from MP3 to DSD256, PCM384 and DXD384. You also get full MQA decoding. The Kensei is packed with high-end capacitors that give you a clean signal, reduce potential distortion and have high-level noise reduction capabilities. You can read more about them here.
The stars of the show are four digital filters and two analog modes. Modes and their corresponding LEDs:
Bit-Perfect (blue) I ran this with Sennheiser IE900 IEMs and it was muted and bright without being transparent. This gives you Hi-Res or lossless audio as intended.
It was greeted as “smooth” with warmth in the vocals instead of the standard (red) brightness.
The minimum phase (yellow) is warmer, but with tight bass. If you are a bass head, this is the filter for you. Use it with the XBass filter on and the K2HD filter on and you’ll get punchy bass without losing mids and vocal clarity.
Gibbs Transient-Optimized (white) upscales your audio to 352/384 kHz. I would describe it as “energetic” overall. You will feel it in the frequency range.
Kensei goes a long way make sure every headset or the IEM you’re plugging in works well with the IEMatch switch, which reduces the output for high-sensitivity IEMs like the Campfire Audio Mammoths I play, and Turbo mode, which does the opposite and boosts the gain by 6dB to drive power-hungry headphones like the HiFiMan Planar magnets I use. From a 477mW or 7.2V 4.4mm output and a 300mW or 8V 3.5 S-Balanced output, the Kensei doesn’t have the power to handle what you throw at it.
As for volume output, you can control the source volume from the Kensei in sync with the source device, or bypass the source device’s audio controls entirely.
The downside to all that amazing power pumping through your ears is that you’ll experience quite a bit of battery drain from your phones and tablets, since that’s what powers the Kensei via the USB-C port. Since your laptops have larger batteries, it won’t be as noticeable and you can easily charge while listening, but there is that drain. No internal battery like here iFi GO blue.
iFi GO bar Kensei: Sound quality
In a word, “Sword Saint” produces a sound that is “ethereal” but full. It’s all there. The sound quality of both the 3.5mm and 4.4mm ports is effortless with great music.
This transparent DAC/Amp lets you enjoy every nuance of stereo imaging. Pair the Kensei with analytical headphones or IEMs and it’s like turning on a projector in a large space previously lit by a small 40-watt bulb. That’s exactly what I experienced when I connected Sennheieser’s IE900 IEMs to a 4.4mm balanced output with a bit-perfect digital filter.
Listening to “Violin Duel” from the Chevalier OST was enlightening. You could hear artifacts and nuances that I missed before. The tension of the bow against the violin strings. The attack changes in the chord, whereas before I could only hear the attack in different movements. Same with Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ‘Em,” where the plucking of banjos and guitars still lined up in the background was richly detailed.
When it comes to bass and sub-bass, transparency really shows how the track is structured. The IE900 isn’t a bass-heavy IEM, but its 7mm speaker drivers can powerfully reproduce deep, dark bass through PEQ or digital filter tuning, as iFi’s XBass filter is activated. Skrillex’s “Mumbai Power” and “Spider-Man: From Spider-Verse” both snarled and roared with enough authority and aggression to force me to make a “face face” as I turned my head to that hideous bass and sub-bass. This led me down the rabbit hole of sampling a dozen or so hip-hop tracks with this IEM/DAC filter combo.
The important thing here is that the digital filters I mentioned in the features section can make your music sound even better depending on what IEMs or headphones you pair with the Kensei. For example, I ran the $120 1MORE Penta Driver IEMs, which don’t have nearly IE900 transparency, but when the K2HD, XBass, and XSpace filters are activated, they pop up and offer a listening experience slightly more than their default settings offer.
iFi GO bar Kensei: Competition
The GO bar Kensei is unique in that it looks more like a collector’s edition DAC with its fancy case, accessories, fit and finish. There are competitors at this price point, however, with different feature offerings. Fiio makes great products, and the Q15 might be better suited to some people’s listening habits, as it has an in-built IPS display and a Bluetooth SoC that gives you access to a wireless high-quality audio connection.
Then there’s the iBasso DC-Elite, which I tried unsuccessfully to get my hands on for a separate review. It has a feature set that closely matches the Kensei and an eye-catching design. On paper, it looks like a worthy contender and is generally regarded as a solid piece of kit.
iFi GO bar Kensei: Should you buy it?
You should buy iFi GO bar Kensei if…
- You don’t need Bluetooth
- You love transparent sounding DACs
- You don’t want PEQ
You should not buy the iFi GO bar Kensei if…
- The price is a concern
- You need Bluetooth
- You want PEQ
GO bar Kensie is transparent without being harsh or overly smooth. It pairs perfectly with musical IEMs, digital filters give you more options as you pair it with different headphones or IEMs, and analog operating modes XBass Plus and XSpace breathe new bass and sub-bass into open-back ears. All this while efficiently handling everything I threw at it, though it comes at the cost of your mobile audio source’s battery life.
This DAC/Amp will be expensive for the casual music consumer. For audiophiles, it’s feature-rich and built like a tank, so it should give you years of listening pleasure on the go.
Amazing sound and features!
For transparency, the ability to enjoy bass and a balanced output, the GO bar Kensei is one of the best mobile DACs you can buy!
