Use your wireless Hi-Res headphones with in-flight entertainment, thanks to this Bluetooth DAC
The iFI UP Travel is ideal for planes, trains and automobiles


Quick Summary
The iFi UP Travel is a two-way Bluetooth DAC that can connect your wireless headphones to in-flight entertainment. It can also stream from your smartphone to your hire car.
Available now, it is priced at £99 / $99 / €99.
Audio tech specialist iFi has launched a new Bluetooth DAC for better audio when you travel.
The iFi UP Travel is a two-way device that can connect your Bluetooth headphones to in-flight entertainment and other wired sound sources. You can also use it to add Bluetooth to a vehicle's Aux inputs – ideal if you're using a hire car, for example.
The DAC is designed for portability, weighing just 25g, and capable of folding into a pocket-friendly lozenge shape. It also runs for 10 hours between charges, which is handy.
It's not just for solo travellers either, you can connect two sets of headphones at once for easy audio sharing.
iFi UP Travel: key features and pricing
This isn't a cheap dongle: it's a serious bit of audio kit. Inside there's the Qualcomm QCC51xx series wireless chipset, and iFi has restricted that to handling Bluetooth and nothing else.
The audio is processed separately by a Cirrus Logic MasterHIFI DAC, which you'll also find in other iFi portables. And it all goes through iFi's bespoke clocking circuitry, which keeps everything in sync.
There's an extensive set of supported codecs – SBC, AAC, aptX (Classic, Low-Latency, Adaptive), LDAC, and LHDC/HWA – and you can also use the UP Travel for hands-free calling thanks to its built-in mic with noise and echo suppression.
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The iFi UP Travel is available from today from ifi-audio.com. The RRP is £99 / $99 / €99 (about AU$205).
However, this isn't the only travel-focused audio product iFi is launching this week. It's also announced the iFi GO Pod Air, which enables you to take wired in-ear monitors (IEMs) and turn them wireless.
It supports up to 24-bit/96kHz Hi-Res Audio, features Cirrus Logic DAC chips and has an RRP of £249 / €249 / $249 (about AU$514).
Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).
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