In all fairness, I’m not sure how’d you’d find out about that on release day. It’s something to find out through use, mostly. I’m also not sure how many people who bought the DX120 bought it to be a USB DAC from a smartphone source. I can, however, easily understand the appeal of the DX120. It’s got a nice form factor, the blue color looks particularly nice (and is $20 USD more on Amazon for it), it’s got a simple, easy to use firmware, has extremely high storage capacity, line out - balanced - optical - coax output and pretty good battery life. Those are some of the reasons I’m keeping an eye on the DX120.
I’ve got the Sony ZX300, and it does just about everything I need it to - USB DAC from phone with a short cable, contain my music library, and doesn’t charge from DAC mode. I like the sound, too, though I recognize that there are strengths of other players, like iBasso and FiiO that better align with my sonic tastes. But my combined storage is nearly full, I require Windows to do the 12 Tone Analysis to take advantage of the SenseMe channels, and the library rebuilds every power off and can take a few minutes to complete. So, this is why I’ll pop up every now and then and ask about teh USB DAC function and battery drain.
So, iBasso’s done a pretty good job on the DX120. They’re ironing out some minor firmware issues as we go along, and it seems most people are pleased with it.