Moondrop MIAD01 :: $399
I thought they were already crazy enough with their CD players and keyboards with built-in DAC, but now they're doing smartphones. wow.
Over the past month, I've been using the MIAD01 with a variety of products. With a number of firmware updates to fix bugs and add features, I felt that the experience that Moondrop was aiming for had reached the point of completion, so I decided to write a long-term review.
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Huge thanks to
HiFiGo for providing a
'slight discount' for this review.
However, this review fully reflects the my honest opinion without anyone else's interference.
Btw, are you more familiar with Korean?
So am I, and If that's the case, I think you'd be better off reading
my review written in Korean here.
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As usual with Moondrop products, the package is decorated with character illustration.
It's a simple package with only the device itself, user manual, and charging cable, so it's rather thin.
A smartphone package without a charger... oh well... sound familiar?
Design Walkthrough
At the top of the phone is the heart of the MIAD01, with a
3.5mm SE and a
4.4mm Balanced output.
Since the 4.4mm socket is thicker than other ports, the top of the device has a stepped design.
Many users said, "
It would have been better if the back plate was smoothed out with more batteries", but I personally thought it was a nice design because the protruding part serves to support the device while allowing the index finger to naturally touch when holding the huge phone in one hand.
I think many people are wondering what the small hole next to the 4.4mm is for, and I thought it was an LED, but it was an
ambient light sensor(...) The display panel usually needs some extra process to hide the sensor and allow light to pass through to it, and I believe they suppressed the production cost by omitting this process.
There's no smart logic to complement the brightness sensor with a front-facing camera, so I often found myself in the uncomfortable situation where the brightness would drop dramatically when the top of the device was covered. This happened so often that I turned off the auto-brightness feature in the end.
Thanks to its complex curved design, the device's exterior is made of hard polycarbonate.
It's accented with orange-colored buttons and has a decal graphic on the back of the body, giving it a cybernetic vibe.
Personally, I'm not a fan of decal graphics on plastic, but I think the MIAD01 has the right vibe.
Overall, it has a familiar matte surface finish that doesn't leave fingerprints, and the wide back plate has a shallow groove pattern that provides a bit of grip. Of course, it's nowhere near as good as a cased phone, so I'm always being extra careful whenever I use this device.
Due to the complex design, I thought it would be difficult to find a case, but it seems that cases are already on sale on Taobao!
source : WekiHome - Youtube
When I buy electronics, I tend to place a certain amount of importance on repairability.
I don't know if I should say 'thanks to the PC body', but unlike most smartphones that glue the glass back panel, the MIAD01 is designed in such a way that you can simply remove the back panel with a guitar peak. The latch doesn't protrude very aggressively, so the general consensus of those who have taken it apart seems that the '
MIAD01 is easy to disassemble.'
If the battery needs to be replaced after a long period of use, it is expected that anyone can easily do it themselves.
The most important issue is whether you can get batteries later tho...
Of course, due to these characteristics, MIAD01 does not support water and dust resistance.
At the bottom of the product, you can find the speaker hole, USB-C port, microphone, and SIM tray.
MIAD01 is equipped with a
USB 3.2 Gen 1 (rebranded USB 3.1) Type-C connector, which is capable of transferring high-capacity, lossless music at speeds of
up to 5Gbps (~625MB/s). It also supports the USB-PD standard, so you can quickly charge it
up to 33W, which is a nice bonus. It can be fully charged from empty to full within about an hour.
Pulling out the dual sim tray, you'll see that you can insert two SIM cards, or one SIM card and one SD card. It claims to recognize
SD cards up to 2TB. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to support eSIMs.
In many ways, it's a device that mainly fits to its identity,
cutting corners where it can and investing heavily where it needs expensive parts. It's not a tightly packed hexagon like any other smartphones...
First Impression as 'Smartphone'
1. Display
The MIAD01 uses a curved OLED display from 'Tianma', and I was a bit surprised to find that the display quality was better than I expected.
With its diamond pixel arrangement, even a smallest text on display is clearly readable. The basic color settings are pretty natural as well, although it looks a bit red-ish in photos. The viewing angles are pretty good too, and the screen supports 120Hz high refresh rate reliably, so even if you're considering it as a smartphone rather than a DAP, it still feels like it has a pretty good display.
It's not without its flaws, though - the screen brightness, which is slightly below average, is a shame.
While most devices these days have a screen brightness of close to 1000 nits, the MIAD01 has a screen brightness of less than 500 nits. This isn't a big deal for indoor use, but when you step outside into the sunlight, it's going to take a lot of concentration to read what's on the screen.
The use of a curved display with a rather sharp curvature is also likely to be quite controversial.
While it has a certain high-end flavor, it is vulnerable to breakage and difficult to attach a protective film, so the preference for curved displays has decreased significantly in recent years. A source from China commented that "the current situation where curved displays are cheaper than flat displays may have had a big impact."
Personally, I felt that the curvature was too much. There are concerns about the screen breaking, but as you can see in the photo above, on a bright screen, the curved edges darken slightly, which can be annoying enough when using the product.
There are also some disappointments outside of the screen. Even with such a good display, the fact that
Widevine's DRM security level is
only L3, which makes it impossible to watch high-definition movies from online services like Netflix, is a rather fatal problem.
2. Software
After the initial setup, the first thing you'll notice is the uniquely designed launcher.
You'll see some Chinese applications pre-installed, including Weibo, but most of them can be deleted and disabled.
Google Play Store is not pre-installed, but you can easily enable Google services by turning on the 'Enable GMS
Google Mobile Service' toggle in the Settings app. You can then download the Play Store APK file and install it to use Google services normally.
After playing around with it, I was able to understand Moondrop's explanation that it aims for 'AOSP-like Experience'. Except for some unique features and design elements, there are no major changes from pure Android, so it's hard to feel the
distinctive flat design or
aggressive process / memory management logic of Chinese domestic devices.
This doesn't mean that MIAD01 is really using stock Android, it's just providing a "near-pure" experience as described.
The overall Android system
was overly dependent on the MIAD01's default launcher. The multitasking screen was dependent on the launcher rather than the system UI. There are also quite a few instances where MIAD01 uses its own implementation of features instead of those built into Android. The System Style related features are an example of this.
If the default launcher was at least average in completeness, it would have been useful, but the basic UI errors and inconsistent icons, not to mention the lack of features, are so unusable that I think most users, including myself, have installed and are using other launchers.
Since Moondrop didn't take this into consideration when it was released, I've experienced various system bugs, such as multitasking feature crashing on reboot when the default launcher is changed.
I've been noticing this issue since I first got the product and even emailed them to get it fixed. They asked me to take a recording of it and eventually fixed the third-party launcher compatibility issue with the latest OTA update.
It's reassuring to see Moondrop's strong future-support commitment and steady updates, but as I explained in the case above, it's worth noting that
the MIAD01's software is somewhat far from stock Android.
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If I had to pick one thing to complain about, it would be that the MIAD01 is
not 'Play Protect' certified device.
Don't get me wrong - you won't have any problems using various Google services, including linking Google account and using the Play Store, but strangely, only the MIAD01 didn't received the 2-step verification notification when logging into my Google account.
I think this is probably because MIAD01 is not 'Play Protect' certified, and there are several reports of the Google Wallet app not working, which adds credence to this assumption.
I've tried installing most of the major Korean banking apps myself and haven't had any issues with them, but I can't guarantee that it won't cause any real-world issues or that all banking apps will work.
Moondrop seems to have promised to fix this issue in the next update. I don't know when that will be.
3. Performance
The MIAD01 uses MediaTek's
Dimensity 7050 chipset. it's just a rebranded Dimensity 1080, so it's safe to assume that it's the same SoC used in other devices like 'Galaxy A34'.
It's not a Qualcomm chipset, so the loss of the aptX series of codecs is a big disappointment, but the trade-off is a much more powerful performance than the Snapdragon 660 series SoCs that are used in many current DAPs. Still, I can't imagine a situation where a phone with a Snapdragon 660 being released in 2024.
For day-to-day tasks like listening to music, surfing the web, and watching videos, the MIAD01 was very fast without feeling stuttery, and it seemed to have no problem playing mobile games as long as you're willing to compromise on graphics options. Given that it was able to handle high frames at medium to low settings with no frame drops even in a fairly heavy games, I think it should be able to handle rhythm games with ease.
source: WekiHome - Youtube
MIAD01 has
12GB of LPDDR4X RAM and
256GB of UFS 3.1 storage, and you'll see that performance is right on spec after storage benchmarks. The specs are high enough to handle everyday tasks and even most games with ease.
Uniquely, the MIAD01 is equipped with LPDDR5 RAM from SK Hynix. I was able to confirm that my hardware was also equipped with LPDDR5 RAM, but strangely, it was only performing at the level of LPDDR4X.
I wonder if this is an intentional performance limitation or if there is another reason.
4. Camera
The MIAD01 has a dual camera design with a 64-megapixel main camera and an 8-megapixel wide-angle camera. Pretty standard, right? Each utilizes a Sony IMX686 sensor and an Omnivision OV8856 sensor.
The punch-hole style front camera utilizes a 32-megapixel Omnivision OV32b40 sensor.
From the product description image, it says "The camera isn't great, but it works", and I was like, "Is it really that bad to say it out loud?" But when I went out and took some pictures, I realized they really meant it.
While it's true that the MIAD01's optical performance are absolutely lacking, it has a basic problem with color reproduction.
This is especially noticeable when shooting subjects with intense primary colors. When you compare it against iPhone SE3, the difference is quite obvious.
Turning on the AI feature in the Camera app will give you a slightly more vibrant photo overall, but if you're shooting the primary-colored subjects I mentioned earlier, you'll notice that the "mashed colors" become the "eye-soaring mashed colors".
Moving away from the color accuracy aspect and looking at the photos again, some would say that the photos are aesthetically pleasing, and I kinda like that style as well in certain situations.
However, the wide-angle camera, with its lower pixel count, tends to have more realistic colors than the main camera. The color difference between the two cameras is so obvious that it's hard to tell which photo is the Moondrop's intended photo style.
The image processing algorithm doesn't seem to be very good, and I don't know if there's room for improvement, as Moondrop has already said "our camera is not good".
5. Other aspects
The MIAD01 does have a
GPS sensor, but it doesn't seem to be very sensitive.
When I install an app that displays GPS information, it seems to recognize the GPS satellites normally, but there is a problem that it cannot determine the location of the phone. Therefore, the GPS function does not work in various map apps including Google Maps.
There are many comments that GPS doesn't work regardless of region, and I don't know what the problem is.
I think it might be a software bug, but I don't know this part. I know that Sewolwoo said that they will improve it with a software update.
Lastly, this
vibration module... I think they used the cheapest vibration module available on the market.
Aside from the jarring vibration, it's so unresponsive that I can't even use the taptic keyboard feature.
This is especially frustrating since I can't live without a taptic keyboard.
What if we treat it as 'DAP'?
1. Hardware
source : WekiHome - Youtube
The Moondrop MIAD01 has a design that utilizes
Two Cirrus Logic CS43131 DAC chipsets to process audio signals.
For its excellent audio performance at low power consumption, this chipset has been used in various DAP products, including the Cowon's Plenue series. Although its status has been somewhat diminished as it has been used in almost every USB DACs where low power design is key. But still, it's hard to imagine a better DAC chipset to fit into a smartphone form factor than the CS43131.
So can the MIAD01 outperform the LG phones?
...Unfortunately, it turns out that smartphone development isn't easy after all. The MIAD01 has one fatal 'flaw'.
The figure above shows the two standards shared by 3.5mm terminals: 'CTIA' and 'OMTP'.
If you pay close attention to the roles assigned to each of the 4-pole terminals, you'll notice that the roles of the 'microphone' and 'ground' terminals are reversed between the two standards.
On a 3.5mm unbalanced terminal, the ground terminal is required for normal sound output. This is why there was an issue with several earphones using the CTIA standard when plugged into an OMTP standard computer, as the ground terminal was not connected. This issue is rarely encountered these days, as most audio devices have moved to the CTIA standard, and terminals that support both CTIA and OMTP are actively used.
The fatal problem with the MIAD01 lies in this.
In order to broadly support devices designed to both standards, the MIAD01 is equipped with a 3.5mm jack that supports both OMTP and CTIA standards simultaneously. In the process, the 'microphone' and 'ground' terminals were connected to each other, which seems to caused some kind of 'ground loop' problem.
In fact, if you try using earphones with a sensitivity of
approximately 125dB/Vrms or higher - connected to the 3.5mm jack, you will notice that
whenever you operate the screen with the music turned off, you will hear some annoying noise.
Of course, it's hard to notice the noise while music is playing, so you might be able to overlook it as a minor drawback in most cases, but personally,
I think it's a fatal flaw that's hard to overlook in a product targeted at 'audiophiles'.
Moondrop has acknowledged the issue and wrote, "
For users who want to enjoy the best sound quality, we recommend using 4.4mm terminals."
Indeed, the audio performance of the 4.4mm socket is better than majority of dongle DACs and it may even compete with some high-performance USB DACs, but the fact that the MIAD01 was rushed to market without addressing the most basic design error in the most popular 3.5mm single-ended socket will forever be its Achilles' heel.
This should have been fixed before release.
It leaves a lot of disappointment.
2. Software
As a 'Hi-Fi smartphone for audiophiles', the MIAD01 offers a wide range of software features related to audio.
Perhaps the most important of these is the 'Android SRC
Sample Rate Converter bypass' feature, which suffered a small controversy early on when it was discovered that the SRC bypass feature didn't work properly. But there's a bit of catch for Moondrop.
In the current Android operating system, there are many ways to achieve so-called "bit-perfect".
DAPs and phones that specialize in listening to music are modifying the operating system itself to prevent 'resampling' from occurring inside the Android system, while some music playback apps, including 'UAPP', have their own logic that bypasses the Android system to deliver sound signals in order to achieve 'bit-perfect' even on ordinary smartphones.
Here's the problem. DAPs, including MIAD01, are designed to bypass SRC with the assumption that music apps will utilize the general Android system. Therefore, apps with their own logic for SRC bypass are more likely to crash, while apps that simply use the given Android features are free from this problem.
On the one hand, MIAD01 can't get the app to bypass SRC because the app is trying to play music in a path it doesn't know, and on the other hand, the application is experiencing a system with an unusual 'feature'
In this case, the 'SRC bypass feature' for the first time, so its own bypass logic doesn't work properly.
This is the reason why the Hiby Music app was not able to bypass SRC at launch: Hiby Music, like UAPPs, has its own logic for bypassing SRC, and this was causing problems because it was behaving outside of the system's expectations.
Of course, I think this is partly Moondrop's fault. They should have made sure that the apps that would be built into the system would work normally without resampling.
Since the issue was raised, Moondrop has provided an OTA update to fix the SRC issue by having the system respond directly to the API used by Hiby Music. At the same time, the top notification bar now displays the sampling rate instead of the clock while the music is playing, making it easier for users to check if the SRC is being bypassed properly.
I tested this feature using a variety of applications and found that all apps that were known to work with 'SRC Bypass' feature displayed the correct sample rate. In particular, the Neutron music player was known to resample unless the 'BitPerfect' option was enabled in the settings, and the noti-bar made this clear.
If you're wondering if the app you're using is bypassing SRC correctly, pay close attention to the sampling rate in the top bar. I personally find this metric to be reliable.
Note that UAPP is utilizing their own audio drivers to bypass the Android system to an extreme degree, so you may not see the sampling rate in the top noti-bar.
In addition to this, the MIAD01 comes with a number of unique features specific to music listening.
I can't say that the 'Amplifier Tube Mode', which mimics the sound of a vacuum tube, or the 'VDSF+ Mode', which adds a sense of space, are of the highest quality, but they're funny feature to try out occasionally.
The 'system-wide parametric EQ' feature, which allows you to manipulate up to nine bands, from 0 to 8, is also quite fascinating.
The EQ profiles you create here can be uploaded to the Moondrop server, and you can also import and apply EQ profiles created by others. It's a little disappointing that you can't create multiple EQ profiles on the device without uploading to the server.
Conclusion
The MIAD01, which received a lot of attention leading up to its unveiling and launch, is a bit of a heretic, standing in
direct contrast to what is currently considered a formula in the smartphone market.
While everyone was focusing on camera quality and trying to make their smartphones thinner and thinner by removing the 3.5mm terminal, Moondrop kept the high-performance SoC and high-performance display even as they made the mind-numbing cost-cutting move of placing a light sensor next to 4.4mm jack. This is where we see the difference with DAP. Because DAPs are saving money on SoCs and displays and putting a little bit more money into the audio circuitry.
Maybe it was destined to be an
'ambiguous entity' from the beginning, because the design is a bit ambiguous as a smartphone, and it lacks something to be used as a DAP. But it's weird, I've been enjoying the moments I've been using the MIAD01. Lying in bed with my HD600 plugged in, watching YouTube, and playing my first rhythm game in a long time with IEM plugged in, was much more fun than I expected.
It's a bit difficult to recommend it to others, and it's hard to argue with the "I'd rather use a dongle" or "I could buy a DAP for that money" arguments,
but strangely enough, I'm really happy with it.
The MIAD01 has a strange charm that's hard to put into words. It's a 'Mobile Audio Internet Device', and as its name suggests, it's a product that shows Moondrop's challenge to pioneer a new genre away from 'Digital Audio Player's. Even now that I'm holding the MIAD01 in my hands, I'm really curious to see how that challenge will continue.
Will Moondrop's reckless endeavor - which seemed like a one-off event to many - continue in the future?
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"So, Do you think I can use MIAD01 as my main phone?"
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Think about it a bit more. I personally don't think it's a good idea to use it as a main phone.
"Do you think it would be good as a DAP replacement?"
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I think it's best to keep your old one.
"How about as an LG phone replacement?"
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If you're not just a music listener, and you consume a lot of digital content,
And if you're willing to make the full migration to 4.4mm Balanced, it might not be a bad choice.
Thank you! I really enjoyed your review as well