The Penon Tail was kindly provided free of charge in exchange for an honest review. I didn’t receive monetary or any other kind of compensation and I don’t use affiliate links. The price of the Penon Tail is $74.90 for the basic version without a cable and you can buy it from the Penon audio store.
Penon Audio
The Penon Audio online shop was born in 2013 with the main goal to sell the best selected audio products at the most affordable prices for both the audiophiles and business users. Together with selling products from various brands, Penon have started building their own earphone cables and after a few years they have expanded into making earphones. Now, they are a well established brand among the personal audio community.
Penon Tail
Penon Tail is a USB DAC dongle with a detachable cable that uses Dual CS43131 DAC chips to do the audio decoding and headphone amplification. A high precision, 100fs femtosecond crystal oscillator is also used to further improve the performance parameters and sound quality. The Tail supports PCM up to 384KHz/32bit and DSD256 sampling rates.
The Tail has three independent hardware buttons and a gain switch that are mounted on both sides of the chassis. Two buttons are used for controlling the volume while the third is for music playback. A single press acts as play/pause, double press will skip to the next and triple to the previous track.
A small LED light that changes colors according to the input sampling rate is hidden in the internal board of the Tail but is barely visible and you have to browse inside through the free headphone jack in order to see it.
Appearance and build quality
The Penon Tail has a rectangular shape and the aluminum chassis that measures 53x20x10mm and weights 20g, is lightweight and compact suitable for everyday carry. It has a nice orange color except for the main surface which is painted white with blue printed letters. It is beautiful looking but I would have liked it more if it had a full orange chassis without the white surface.
Build quality and finish are excellent with only two remarks. The gain switch is a little stiff and the white surface looks prone to scratching and wear over time.
Accessories
The Tail comes with a small carrying pouch made from real leather and a high quality detachable cable which is slightly longer than usual. Upon placing your order you can select between a USB type C to C or type C to Lighting cables or buy both or even order the Tail without a cable to use your own and save some money.
Power output and noise
The Penon Tail has two headphone outputs, one 3.5mm single ended and one 4.4mm balanced. The maximum power delivery is 1.2V, 45mW/32Ω or 2.2V, 8.07mW/600Ω from the 3.5mm and 2.2V, 151.25mW/32Ω or 4.2V, 29.4mW/600Ω from the 4.4mm jack. These are the typical numbers for dual CS43131 DAC chips that run in a balanced configuration and use their own embedded headphone amplifiers. Plenty of power to run your earphones, like the ISN Audio EST50 and a lot of efficient headphones. The Penon Tail is totally silent without producing internal noise and it doesn’t get affected by phone EMI. The Tail is also power efficient and it doesn’t produce heat. As per usual practice the Penon Tail was left playing music for about 50 hours before listening evaluation.
A workaround for independent volume adjustment
The Penon Tail doesn’t support app connectivity for bypassing Android system volume control so you are stuck with 15 steps of adjustment. Imagine what a surprise it was to unexpectedly find out that the Penon Tail is compatible with the iBasso UAC application that bypasses internal volume control and offers 63 steps of fine adjustment. Just download the application, plug your Tail and grant access to enable fine volume control.
Listening impressions
The Penon Tail is surprisingly crystal clear and transparent with excellent linearity while not lacking in musicality. The sound signature is close to the typical CS house sound which is pretty engaging and musical while pushing the technicalities of the chip configuration to the maximum possible amount. In this regard the the Penon Tail has more common sound characteristics with the iBasso DC04PRO rather than the warmer sounding Truthear SHIO. People who are fond of the CS43131 NOS filter are going to be disappointed because there is no option to select it.
The sound quality of the Penon Tail is really great with a tight and controlled bass which is punchy, impactful and dynamic. The mid-range sounds crystal clear and resolving while the treble is airy and energetic without sounding bright. Layering and overall definition are more than satisfying as is detail retrieval and micro-dynamics.
The timbre is natural and realistic with just a bit of artificiality in the treble while the sound is full bodied and by no means dry or sterile. The neutrality of the Penon Tail helps it to match well with all kinds of earphones, even brighter ones, and feels at home with all kinds of music. The Penon Vortex made an excellent match for listening to classical music while I switched to the Hidizs MP145 to enjoy some classic rock songs.
The soundstage has excellent width and the presentation is airy and spacious with good imaging albeit lacking in depth and holography.
Selected comparisons
I am not going into detailed comparisons because there are so many USB DAC dongles with the same chip configuration that sound more or less the same with some minor and subtle differences. As an example the Truthear Shio is just a bit warmer and less transparent. Additionally most of them have similar features and price tags. So whether you are going to prefer one over another it has to do more with brand preferences and design rather than anything else.
In the end
The Penon Tail has great sound quality, it includes useful features like hardware buttons and the price is right so it has nothing to fear from the competition although it doesn’t break new ground.
Copyright – Petros Laskis 2023.
+ Crystal clear and transparent + Great Technicalities + Musical and engaging + Not much artificial timbre + Dead silent + Two headphone outputs + Can drive full sized headphones + Hardware buttons + Excellent build quality + Compact and lightweight + Carrying pouch is included - The white surface looks prone to scratching - The gain switch is a little stiff - No app connectivity - No independent volume adjustment (but there is a workaround) - Nothing groundbreaking
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