HiBy R6 Pro II vs Sony NW-ZX707

Both are portable players, $750 against $898. This page puts them side by side on the only three things a maker can be held to — power, output impedance and noise — and then asks the question that actually matters: which headphones do they treat differently?

The HiBy R6 Pro II reaches 100 dB on 566 of the 567 models here, the Sony NW-ZX707 on 550.

Every published figure, next to each other

SpecificationHiBy R6 Pro IISony NW-ZX707
Power into 32Ω750 mW25 mW
Power into 150Ω280 mW5.3 mW
Power into 300Ω140 mW2.7 mW
Power into 600Ω70 mW1.3 mW
Output impedance0.6 Ω unverifiednot published
Output noise4 µV unverifiednot published
Price$750$898
Headphones it reaches 100 dB on
out of 567
566550

A figure marked not published is missing from the maker’s own material, which is not the same as being good or bad. Where one of these two publishes a number and the other does not, the comparison on that axis cannot be made at all — and saying so is more useful than guessing.

Where each power figure comes from

LoadHiBy R6 Pro IISony NW-ZX707
32 ΩUnverifiedDerived
150 ΩUnverifiedDerived
300 ΩUnverifiedDerived
600 ΩUnverifiedDerived

HiBy R6 Pro II publishes no electrical specification at all. That is true of 10 of the 280 sources here, and the figures in that column come from independent measurement rather than from a maker document — which is not worse, but it is not the same thing, and it cannot be checked against anything the maker will stand behind.

The Sony NW-ZX707 column stands on figures its maker printed, but not at these loads — every row of it is worked out from power published somewhere else. Reading the two straight across sets one kind of claim against another, and nobody has written down the conditions of both side by side.

What each of these labels means, and why a derived figure is still worth printing, is set out in how this data was built.

The headphones that tell them apart

16 headphones reach 100 dB on the HiBy R6 Pro II but not on the Sony NW-ZX707 — Audio-Technica ATH-R70xa, Beyerdynamic DT 880 Edition (600Ω), Beyerdynamic DT 990 Edition (600Ω), 13 more.

550 of the 567 models here reach 100 dB on both. That is a power count and nothing more; whether either source suits a given headphone also depends on the two lines above.

Headroom and hiss on 8 models, both sources

The counts above say how many models the two treat differently. This says by how much. The same 8 headphones appear on every page of this kind, ordered from the easiest to drive to the hardest, so a row can be read across pages as well as across columns. Headroom is at a 100 dB SPL peak.

The widest gap on the list is the Audio-Technica ATH-R70X: HiBy R6 Pro II has +18 dB of headroom there against +0 dB. 17 dB is about 53 times the power, which matters for peaks rather than for how loud the music sits.

The hiss columns are empty for HiBy R6 Pro II and Sony NW-ZX707 because neither maker publishes no output noise figure. That is a gap in the specification, not a quiet amplifier, and it is left blank here rather than filled with a plausible number.

HeadphoneImpedanceNeedsHiBy R6 Pro II headroomSony NW-ZX707 headroomHiBy R6 Pro II hissSony NW-ZX707 hiss
Shure SE8469 Ω0.04 mW+37 dB+28 dBnot publishednot published
Campfire Audio Andromeda 20209 Ω4.0 mW+17 dB+8 dBnot publishednot published
Audeze LCD-2 Classic70 Ω0.79 mW+27 dB+12 dBnot publishednot published
Beyerdynamic DT 1990 Pro (250Ω)250 Ω0.63 mW+24 dB+7 dBnot publishednot published
HiFiMAN HE400se25 Ω7.9 mW+19 dB+6 dBnot publishednot published
Audio-Technica ATH-R70X470 Ω1.6 mW+18 dB+0 dBnot publishednot published
Sennheiser HD 600300 Ω6.6 mW+13 dB-4 dBnot publishednot published
HiFiMAN Susvara60 Ω50 mW+10 dB-6 dBnot publishednot published

The gap in dollars, against the gap in numbers

The Sony NW-ZX707 costs $148 more than the HiBy R6 Pro II, and on these three axes the money buys nothing: among the 567 models here there is not one that the Sony NW-ZX707 handles and the HiBy R6 Pro II does not — not on power, not on the one-eighth rule, not on hiss. The traffic runs the other way: the cheaper HiBy R6 Pro II drives 16 models to 100 dB that the Sony NW-ZX707 does not.

Everything in this paragraph counts only figures the two makers published. An advantage on an axis one of them leaves blank cannot be counted, and is not counted — how often that happens is its own page.

Both pages in full

Each has a page of its own with a full headphone list and the provenance of every figure — worth opening here, because HiBy R6 Pro II has published no electrical specification at all and everything above comes from independent measurement: HiBy R6 Pro II and Sony NW-ZX707. Or put either against your own headphones in the source comparison tool.

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