Disclosure: I’d like to thank Surfans for providing me with the F28 for this review. All thoughts and opinions are my own, and Surfans had no say or input on the contents of this review.

Surfans is probably best known for their F20 digital audio player, and mostly because it is one of the few DAPs available that does not impose a touchscreen on its users. The price, of course, is also attractive, as it comes in under $130. Today I have the Surfans F28, which is the next DAP in Surfans’ lineup and comes in at $179 USD. Technically, this DAP has been around for a few years, but Surfans has updated this version with a 4.4mm balanced output instead of 2.5mm, a proper implementation of the volume knob (before it would increase volume by twisting it counter-clockwise), as well as a slightly slimmer profile and slightly smaller battery as a result.

Inside the DAP, there are still dual ESS SABRE ES9018K2M DACs, Bluetooth 5.2, and a customized version of HiBy OS, all supported by the Ingenic X1000E SOC. Competition is getting fierce at this price point, though, so the F28 will need to impress at its one purpose in life, playing music easily with good sound quality output. So, does it succeed, or is it encumbered by issues that typically plague budget digital audio players? Read on to find out.

• Surfans F28
• USB-A to USB-C cable
• 64GB microSD card
• Manual

The Surfans F28 is an extremely well-built DAP for this price. It is made from a CNC-cut zinc-alloy frame, and it’s a joy to hold in your hand. The edges are smooth, and it has a good distribution of weight, with a heftiness that gives it some density and makes it feel very premium. Both the front and the back of the device are made of 2.5D glass, which gives it a slight curve at the edges, which again, makes it look and feel very smooth and polished. My only complaint is that when moving/shaking the device, I can very faintly hear some jiggling inside, which is probably the battery moving against the inside of the case. Other than that, this design, build, and quality are simply superb.

The display on the front is a 3.5” IPS LCD touchscreen with a resolution of 320×480. It gets pretty bright and also pretty dark, which makes it great to use in both very dark rooms and in direct sunlight. The album art looks great on the screen, and it has good color reproduction. Touch sensitivity is also very good and responsive; I never had an issue with accidental activations or unresponsiveness. Easily one of the better screens in a DAP under $200.

The left side of the F28 has most of the controls. Starting at the top is the power button, with an indicator light below it to indicate power and charging status. Below that are the previous track, play/pause, and next track buttons. The buttons have excellent feedback when pressing them, and maybe are just a bit too audible when pressing them, but they feel very nice to use.

The bottom is where the USB-C connector and microSD slot are located. The top of the DAP has the 4.4mm balanced and 3.5mm SE connections, as well as the ALPS volume wheel on the far right. Turning the wheel clockwise increases the volume, and turning it counterclockwise decreases the volume. The wheel is, honestly, a little disappointing for me. It’s a bit too easy to rotate, and lacks the resistance that would really give it a satisfying feel, in my opinion.

The back, as mentioned before, has a glass covering, and is where the Surfans branding is.

The matte black color scheme and gold accents around the headphone outputs and volume wheel really give the F28 a classy yet understated look. I’m not sure pictures do justice to how elegant it looks.

The Surfans F28 uses HiBy OS, but the UI design looks drastically different from most other devices that use this OS. The very top status bar shows the current volume, audio output selection, playback status (music is playing or paused), Bluetooth codec if Bluetooth is being used, time, current gain mode (low or high), and battery percentage.

The upper section of the screen displays the currently playing track by displaying the album art and the track name. Tapping the album art will bring you to the Now Playing screen, where you can swipe from the left side of the screen to the right to bring you back to the previous screen.

Below the currently playing track section are the following options:

• Update database
• Playlist
• My music
• Folder
• Electronic Text
• Wireless set
• Play set
• System set

Update database simply scans for new music, which can be annoying if you accidentally tap it. It displays the number of tracks scanned, then exits the screen when done.

Playlist is where your music files are, which is a very confusing name for this section. You have the option of All (to view all tracks), Recent (recently played tracks), Albums, Artists, and Genres.

My music is where favorites and playlists are located. I think Surfans accidentally switched the Playlist and My music headings, since this section should be called “Playlist” instead. From here, you can view Favorite tracks, My song list (playlists), recent tracks, and Recently added tracks. The “My song list” allows you to create new playlists, save existing ones as m3u files, or import m3u playlist files.

Folder is the folder browser view. You can either browse the microSD card or access any external storage that is connected by USB.

Electronic text allows you to view and read text files. It’s absolutely useless for a DAP, and why it’s included with HiBy OS, I do not know. And yes, I will complain about it in every review of a HiBy OS device I do, because it’s development time that could be better spent on improving the UI or adding useful features to the OS.

Wireless set is where you access the Bluetooth settings, and where you can enable HiBy Link. The Bluetooth settings allow you to force select which codec to use, as well as adjust the Bluetooth volume for the device if needed.

Play set is where the playback options are located. Here you can select the Play mode (play, Loop track, Shuffle, Loop list), set the outputs to either headphone out or Line out (Line out will set the volume to maximum), enable the 10-band Equalizer for setting a custom EQ or uising one ofp the built-in presets, enable or disable the resume function to resume from the track or track position, enable Gapless playback, various volume options, Crossfade support, ReplayGain, balance, Play through Albums, select one of the digital filters, and Play through folders.

Lastly, there is System set, which is where all the system settings are located. They are all self-explanatory in the pictures below, and essentially are the same as on other HiBy OS devices. One notable difference, though, is that Surfans has included a few different themes, which allows at least some variety. They aren’t terrible either, in my opinion.

Here are some pictures of the theme options:

The Surfans F28 has Bluetooth 5.2 with support for the SBC, AAC, aptX, LDAC, and UAT codecs. Overall, Bluetooth performance is phenomenally stable. My biggest concern was the LDAC “audio quality” mode that forces 990kbps. Usually, this is where devices will stumble, as it requires a stable and consistent Bluetooth connection to maintain this bitrate. You do have the Standard (660kbps) and Auto (variable bitrate) options as well, but obviously, you want to get the highest bitrate option for the best sound quality.

I tested LDAC with my Sony WH-1000XM5, SoundPeats Air5 Pro, and EarFun Air Pro 4. They all sounded excellent and maintained a stable connection with no dropouts or stuttering. I even verified the bitrate with my Qudelix 5K just to be sure it was actually setting it properly, and indeed it was as I also experienced no issues when using the Qudelix 5K via Bluetooth.

The other codecs, SBC, AAC, and aptX (classic, not HD, which is disappointing) all performed great as well. One issue I did have, though, is that the Surfans F28 does not play nice with AirPods. I tested my AirPods 4 with ANC, as well as the AirPods Pro Gen 2, and while they initially paired and played music just fine, if you pause music and then play again, you will not get any audio playback. This is a very common issue on HiBy OS devices that requires firmware updates to resolve, so hopefully Surfans is able to resolve this. Practically speaking, though, I would suggest only using AirPods with Apple devices, as even on Android devices, you are not getting the exact same audio experience and quality due to Android’s poor AAC encoder support.

You also have the ability to pair the F28 with a smartphone or laptop and essentially use it as a portable Bluetooth DAC/Amp. I tested this with my Samsung Galaxy Fold 7, and it performed wonderfully. This type of functionality is great to see on a DAP.

Besides the AirPods issue, the Bluetooth performance on the Surfans F28 is one of the best I’ve had for a DAP under $200. Only the Shanling M1 Plus has performed this well.

Surfans states the expected battery life of the F28 to be 12 hours of music playback. Using the 3.5mm output, low gain, and the volume set at 35, I was able to get just over 12 hours, which is great to see. With the 4.4mm balanced output, the F28 lasted 9.5 hours under the same conditions. If you interact with the device more, then expect less battery life. Overall, this is not great performance, but it’s not terrible either, it’s simply average. It also charges from 0% to full in just over 2 hours, which is very acceptable in my opinion. You can also charge the device when it is powered off.

Standby time is sub-standard, though. After 2 days, the device will lose its charge completely, even with the Standby setting enabled in the settings.

Since the Surfans F28 uses HiBy OS, the file structure and playlist files operate the same as on other devices using this OS. As I have mentioned in my other reviews for HiBy OS devices, I use MusicBee to manage my music library, and typically use it to sync music and playlists to microSD cards. Plugging the F28 into a Windows computer, it will appear as an external drive that you can sync files to, allowing you to access the microSD card in this way. I would highly suggest using a microSD card adapter instead, though, as it will write files much faster (this goes for any DAP, really).

Regardless of what method you use to sync music to the F28, you need to create a Music folder on the root of the microSD card and place your music files there. Then you can put the microSD card back into the player, go to the Music section, select “Music Settings”, and then select “Update database”.

For playlists, create a folder on the root of the microSD card called “playlist_data”. The F28 can recognize M3U playlist files, but the file paths of the music files need to be relative, not absolute. So it would look like this:

..\Music\Led Zeppelin\IV (HD Remastered Deluxe Edition)\04. Stairway to Heaven.flac

HiBy OS devices also support this format:

a:\Music\Led Zeppelin\IV (HD Remastered Deluxe Edition)\04. Stairway to Heaven.flac

To load the playlists, go to the My music section, then My song list, and select “Load playlist” from the same screen, and it will search and add them. The playlists can then be accessed from this same screen.

Note that there is a 50,000 track limit for the Music app, but essentially unlimited for the File browser. Considering the F28 can only support microSD cards up to 512GB, this shouldn’t be an issue for most of the intended users of this DAP.

When I first got the F28, I did have a strange issue with the charging behaviour. There was a strange bug that would keep the charging UI active even with no cable plugged in. I managed to get a new firmware directly from Surfans that resolved this, but the newest firmware does not appear on their website, so I am including a copy of it here, along with a text file for the instructions to install it: https://drive.proton.me/urls/WVXC68F8AR#SoCNITUqBvUT

As you have seen from the pictures in the previous sections, the UI of the Surfans F28 has a mostly logical layout, which helps for a good music playback experience. Once your music and playlists are loaded, you can simply play your music and not have to mess with anything else on the device.

Now, there are some things about the UI that do annoy me. One of them is the scrolling text on the main screen, which can be very distracting. The second is the Now Playing screen. On this screen, it only displays the track title on the top left of the screen, in white text, on top of the album art. If your album art is white, you will not see the text.  If they would shrink the album art a little, there is more than enough room on the screen to show not only the track title, but the artist and album info as well.

Album art thumbnails do appear in various sections, such as when browsing Artists or albums, even songs in playlists. The album art is slow to load, though, and the cache doesn’t seem to persist when the device is powered off and then on. This is unfortunate, as I do like to see the album art when scrolling through artists and tracks.

Otherwise, as far as usability goes, playback works great. The Now Playing screen has all the necessary functions right there, and tapping the 3 dots on the bottom right presents more options. There is even lyric support, so if you have embedded lyrics or lyric files, tapping the album art will display them.

Overall, UI navigation is a little clumsy, and reminds me of using an iPhone in the sense that there is a back swipe gesture, but also on the top left, there is usually (but not always) a back button. I also do wish that there was a quick settings panel that you could access by swiping down from the top of the screen to access things like gain control and filter selection, but this is a minor gripe. Touch sensitivity is good, but animations are sometimes on the sluggish side when going back to a previous screen or scrolling too fast. This also results in some observable screen tearing, like you would see on a computer that does not have vsync enabled. These issues never impacted the overall experience, though, just nitpicks by me.

If I had one thing I would thing to complain about on a hardware level, though, it would be the volume wheel. I love volume wheels, and this one is just OK. It doesn’t feel very accurate as there is a little bit of play when turning it, and it is far too easy to accidentally turn it while handling the device or setting it down. The lack of a physical hold button, or even a variety of button lock options, only complicates matters. You can have either all buttons usable or only the power button usable when the screen is off.

The F28 is generally a plug-and-play device, and for this, I do appreciate its simplicity. The excellent build quality and design complement the UI and listening experience to give you a very competent DAP package that I have previously only really found in the Shanling M1 Plus, at least in this price range.

The Surfans F28 can be used as a USB DAC, and what I really like is that you don’t need to install any drivers, so it’s simply plug and play. It works very well and the sound quality is excellent. There is one thing to note, though is that like many other DAPs with USB DAC functionality, there is a bit of a delay in the audio signal of about 150-200ms (not an exact measurement, just my best guess using the eye test). So, when watching videos, the audio will be slightly out of sync with the video. It’s not that noticeable or bothersome for videos, but it is a dealbreaker for gaming, so just be aware of this if it’s your intention to use the F28 in this way.

There is also some background noise when no audio is being played, mostly evident when using more sensitive IEMs.

The Surfans F28 has a decent amount of output power for a sub-$200 DAP. The 3.5mm SE connection is able to do 125mW, and the 4.4mm balanced connection can output 400mW.

I had no issues driving any of the headphones I own, using either of the outputs. My Sennheiser HD 620S, HIFIMAN Sundara, and Meze 105 AER were not limited by the 3.5mm connection. Similarly, the HD 660S2 sounds great on the 4.4mm balanced output.

In regards to IEMS, I tested using the 64 Audio Solo, Simgot EA1000 Fermat, and ZiiGaat Crescent, and did not hear any background noise or hiss, just dead silence. This gives the F28 a lot of versatility since you can use it with more sensitive IEMs, as well as mid-range headphones.

If you find you need more power or require PEQ support, you have the ability to connect the F28 to a USB DAC/Amp via the USB-C connection, and it will output audio just fine.

The Surfans F28 provides you with a detailed and clean sound profile. It also sounds like it has a sort of smoothness starting in the upper-midrange, leading into the treble. It also has a slightly more expansive sound than other DAPs I’ve tried in this price range, letting some tracks breathe a bit. I found this added a nice element to acoustic and live recordings, sort of an analog quality that brings out the character in some tracks. Others can nitpick the details about the bass, midrange, and treble, so I’ll finish off by saying that the F28 does not color your IEMs or headphones in any way, but it has a high ceiling that allows those that scale well to reach their full potential, especially with IEMs. The 64 Audio Solo, in particular, just sounds fantastic with the F28.

The Surfans F28 offers a very good package at its $179 USD price point. It’s competing with the likes of the HiBy R3 II 2025, R3Pro II, Shanling M1 Plus, and TempoTec V3 Blaze. The Surfans F28 falls short in some aspects, such as the various UI issues, average battery life, and awful standby time.

What makes the F28 stand out, though, is its excellent build quality and classy aesthetic, a slightly different look of HiBy OS (even if some areas of the UI are a bit unintuitive), excellent sound quality, above-average output power, and absolutely solid and reliable Bluetooth performance, especially where LDAC is concerned.

Surfans is not a large and well-known company, so it’s nice to see that we can indeed have some competition in the digital audio player market. The F28 really does a lot of things very well. I they can refine the UI a bit, and either offer more screen lock options, or a physical hold button in their next iteration, then I think the device will be just about perfect (longer battery life would also be preferred, but I’d rather have my first two suggestions instead). If you’re looking for a DAP in the $200 price range, I think you should strongly consider the Surfans F28 if it fits your requirements.

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