"Brilliant" TOPPING NX7 Portable Amp: Prime Audio

Note: This article is based on the video "TOPPING NX7 | Get stacked bro" made by Prime Audio Reviews on his YouTube channel and is printed here in partnership with Prime Audio Reviews. The review was originally posted on April 28th, 2022. Edits have been made for clarity and length. You can purchase the TOPPING NX7 Portable Amp on Apos Audio.

Intro

What’s cracking, audio fans? It’s David here from Prime Audio Reviews. What we’re looking at today is the TOPPING NX7. This is not a DAC. It’s just an amplifier. And the price is $179. It’s about the size of a regular phone. It takes the sound from whatever your source may be and it makes it louder. That’s all it does, pure and simple.

Features

This has TOPPING’s NFCA, or Nested Feedback Composite Amplifier, modules. What is special about this amplifier is that it has incredibly good measurements, like all TOPPING stuff does nowadays. It’s got a very, very clean signal, stupidly low distortion, and excellent signal-to-noise ratio. Now, the battery on this thing… on low or medium gain, you’ll get about 20 hours of battery life. On high gain, you’ll get about 10 hours. That’s pretty reasonable.

Sound quality

Now, you’ve got some serious, serious audio horsepower, but that doesn’t mean much if it doesn’t sound good. So how does it actually sound? It has an unbiased sound signature. Each part of the sound spectrum, from the bottom to the top, gets the same equal treatment. There’s no bias towards the bass, mids, or treble. It’s just an even playing field. In fact, listening to the NX7 might just reveal traits about your source that you weren’t aware of. When something has such absurdly low levels of distortion and a silent noise floor, all the details come through unhindered. There’s no masking or smearing of the signal, because everything is just so clean.

So what I hear with this thing, especially with a really good source like this, is a sort of layering within the music. As I said, there’s no bias on any particular frequency. It’s very transparent and linear. It’s an uncolored sound, but boy is it revealing. It gives you a huge amount of detail and beautiful layering within the sound stage.

The sound stage itself is not as wide as a desktop amplifier, but it does have very good depth. And because it’s got such a beautiful black background, and virtually zero distortion, the imaging is spectacular. You get a good idea of the positions of instruments within the sound stage.

It’s got a nice robust sound that can deliver really punchy, powerful bass, while never sacrificing any subtlety or nuance. The dynamics are great. It can deliver big punchy drums or micro details. It all comes through. It’s all there.

Really, there isn’t a whole lot more to say about it because, as I said, it’s just–at least on the outside–a simple device. But what it does it does incredibly well. And if you are someone who is looing for a straight-up amplifier, I can’t think of anything much better at the moment.

Conclusion

The TOPPING NX7 sounds fantastic. I thought I was gonna have a really crappy time doing this review, because, you know, a portable amp! But I have had such a cracking good time listening to this over the last few days. It’s been brilliant.