Naim Uniti Atom Headphone Edition review

NAIM UNITI ATOM HEADPHONE EDITION

Presentation and build

The Uniti Atom arrived for review safely stowed inside a very serious-looking large white box which gives you the impression that a very serious piece of tech is packed away inside. Lifting up the unit itself is an even more serious deal – it’s one absolute beast of a device. While the 25 cm wide, square-ish Uniti Atom isn’t all that much bigger than other DAC/amp combos that you might already have parked on your desktop, it weighs an absolute ton. Ok, maybe not that much, but its 7 kg mass means that you need to be careful when carrying around placing this absolute unit of a $3,299 device. I understand that much of the Uniti Atom’s curb-weight is owed to it having a massive toroidal transformer inside, to power its class A/B amplification stage. 

The Uniti Atom’s build and finish are absolutely superb, as you’d expect of a device with its price tag. The top of the unit sports a super-premium brushed aluminium, and the fins on the side are milled of solid aluminium which also act as heat-sinks – not that you’ll ever feel more than the slightest hint of warmth that lets you know that the Uniti Atom is switched ‘on’. Like its non-Headphone Edition counterpart, this newest Uniti Atom is simply a stunning-looking device. With a mix of minimal futurism and sleek utilitarianism, the Uniti Atom is very much the ‘statement piece’ and would not look out of place at all on full display in the living area of your home, let alone in your listening area. It’s a stunning piece of industrial design and it certainly lives up to the price tag in that regard – it’s a wonder to behold in the flesh. 

The rear of the Uniti Atom is chock-a-block full of the various aforementioned digital and analogue inputs, as well as the analogue preamp outputs. One slightly curious feature on the rear of the Uniti Atom is its XLR headphone jack. You might be scratching your head as to why it was left back here as a seeming afterthought, but I actually appreciated the fact that I could tuck my headphone cables underneath my desk and into the back of the unit, leaving my desktop clear of clutter and the brilliant fascia and display of the Uniti Atom clear of anything protruding.

The ‘face’ of the Uniti Atom is dominated by a hi-res colour LCD display that shows track information, cover art, as well as access to the many menus and setting screens that can be accessed. Key device settings can be accessed via physical buttons on the front right of the Uniti Atom, including play/pause; input selection; internet radio presets; and standby/power. The front left of the unit features a headphone/preamp switch (they cannot be accessed at the same time); 6.3mm and 4.4mm headphone jacks, a USB socket, and the very cool-looking backlit ‘Naim’ logo. 

All of the Uniti Atom’s settings can be accessed via its absolutely terrific included RF remote control. This sleek little backlit number is both functional and intuitive, allowing you to easily sail through the device’s setting and inputs. So many multi-purpose audio devices fall flat due to their remote control being included as an afterthought, but not so the Uniti Atom – this is the best I’ve encountered on any device. The neatest party trick on the remote is the way it displays the current device volume via gradations backlit around the circular up/down/left/right buttons, which brings me to the physical pièce de résistance of the Uniti Atom – its stunning volume control. 

Rather than being mounted on the front like any ‘normal’ device, Naim has equipped the Uniti Atom with the most visually stunning and absolutely enormous volume wheel smack-bang on top of the device. The white ring of light that surrounds it gives off definite ‘Tron’ vibes and marks out the Uniti Atom as the technological statement piece that it most certainly is. Rather than being an analogue potentiometer, the Uniti Atom has a digital volume pot that allows the user to make precise volume adjustments between ‘00’ and ‘100’. 

User experience

Right out of the box, the Uniti Atom asks you to ‘pair’ it with its remote by holding it against the front window for three seconds, which does so without any fuss. Next, it asked me to connect to a local wifi network and then proceeded to update its firmware to the latest version. 

To start things off cautiously, I decided to use some ‘wired’ connections for my early listening tests. I’m a big fan of optical digital inputs, as I like using this format for my CD player, Xbox One, as well as the optical output built into the headphone jack of my 2015 Macbook Pro (the only thing stopping me from ‘upgrading’ from it!). And it has two of them! I don’t have any coax source devices at the moment but for a device intended to act as the brains of a digital listening system, I’m super thankful for the facilities provided here. If I could wish for one change here, I would like to see an HDMI-ARC connection here too, which would mean that the Uniti Atom could play nicely with home entertainment systems. But alas, you can’t have everything. 

Bluetooth connectivity worked flawlessly with every device that I paired with the Uniti Atom, but with so many hi-res options to play with here, I wasn’t really interested in using a lossy format with such a capable device – this feature is more about convenience than anything else. Another feature on the Uniti Atom that falls into the ‘convenience’ bucket for me is internet radio. I must admit, I’m not really a big fan of internet radio, nor the ‘normal’ radio for that matter. Still, the fact that it’s included is cool, I guess, if you’re keen to simply browse many global services and just ‘set and forget’ something to have on in the background. I could hear obvious digital artifacts from listening via internet radio, so quickly forgot about it and went back to some good-old Redbook 44.1. 

Roon is a gamechanger when it comes to digital listening, giving you enormous power over your local and streaming libraries as well as your listening devices – and the Uniti Atom works absolutely flawlessly as a Roon Ready device. It was simply a case of adding it as an output device, and that was it – all I had to do was hit ‘play’ on my Macbook (or via the Roon app on my phone), and in merely a couple of seconds sweet music was playing over the Uniti Atom. The beauty of Roon is its ability to control upstream digital playback settings, which meant that I could switch DSP and crossfeed settings on and off on the fly all without needing to even plug into the Unit Atom. Simply brilliant. After I had Roon up and running, I didn’t even bother using wired digital connections again for the rest of my time with the Uniti Atom, so good was the experience (not to mention the sound!). 

Another wireless feather in the cap of the Uniti Atom is the fact that it has inbuilt Chromecast connectivity. I could simply load up the Tidal app on my phone, and ‘send’ music to the Uniti Atom with the press of a button – the convenience of this cannot be understated. I’ve said before that the best kind of device is the one that makes you able to listen to music more quickly, and more often, and the Uniti Atom just gets you into the groove faster than anything else thanks to its brilliant and seamless connectivity options. I briefly tested the Uniti Atom with Airplay on my Macbook mainly to confirm that it does indeed work, but I did notice some rather annoying system-wide latency that made conference calls and video watching fairly jarring.  

After rabbiting on about how digitally brilliant the Uniti Atom is, I must briefly remind you again that it is capable of pairing with analogue devices courtesy of its RCA inputs. This meant that I could happily spin vinyl from my phono preamp, or feed it from an upstream DAC. However, as one canny Headfonia reader has pointed out, the Uniti Atom converts all incoming analogue signals back in the digital domain, so that means that it’s undergoing filtering by the onboard Burr-Brown DAC. 

Making volume adjustments in both headphone and preamp mode using the volume wheel on the Uniti Atom is an absolute delight – it has a wonderfully light tactile feel, and you just can’t help wanting to spin it. If I’m being picky, being mounted on top of the unit does make it a fraction further away to reach compared to if it were front-mounted, but I really don’t mind at all – I’ll happily give Naim a ‘pass’ here. Naturally, the top-mounted volume wheel makes stacking out of the question here. But then again, the whole point of the Uniti Atom Headphone Edition is that you don’t need to stack it with anything else. The Uniti Atom makes for a genuinely superb preamplifier, with that Class A/B amplification stage making for a terrific pairing with my custom Hypex NCore stereo amp and KEF LS50 speakers. As well as sounding terrific in this set-up, I can confirm that you could happily live with the Uniti Atom as ‘only’ a preamp and never once make use of its headphone abilities, although it would be somewhat of a waste to do so. The awesome remote and connectivity, as well as XLR + RCA pre-outs mean that you can throw the Uniti Atom upstream into pretty much any existing system, giving you control over subwoofers, power amplifiers or powered monitors. 

And last but not least, I haven’t even mentioned the absolutely wonderful Naim app which can be used to control all of the devices functions and playback settings. While many manufacturers have tried to cobble-together apps to function with their hardware, they should simply stick to hardware – I won’t name names. However, the Naim app is no afterthought. It has inbuilt access to Spotify, Qobuz and Tidal as well as allowing you to choose from a huge library of internet radio stations. Hats must go off here to Naim for putting genuine time and effort into making this, well, work.

All-in-all, we have on our hands one stunningly well-made piece of audio equipment that also happens to be simply brilliant when it comes to its ability to play music from just about any source, and play nicely with a wide range of other equipment when called for. But the Uniti Atom gets an unreserved ten out of ten when it comes to being simply easy to live with. It’s a pleasure to interact with, and it makes you just want to listen more – and we haven’t even gotten to how it sounds yet… 

Head over to page 3 to continue the review. 

Page 1: Naim, Naim Uniti Atom HE

Page 3: Headphone Performance, Comparisons, Conclusion

4.2/5 - (69 votes)
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Hailing from Sydney's eastern beaches, Matty runs his own beer business, 'Bowlo Draught', as well as working in creative advertising. When he's not enjoying his hifi and vinyl collection at home, he can probably be found rolling-up on the green at his beloved Bondi Bowling Club.

11 Comments

  • Reply May 18, 2021

    Tibor Michalčík

    Hi.
    From the moment I have seen this device I am in love. It has everything I need and want in one piece. You have it already in the house, good jobbb done again, thanks. I believe I have very similar taste, as you do, on gear and how it should sound, maybe I will give on your recommendation again. Thank you.
    But… You take such good pictures, why do we get those sd sizes? It looks awful on my screen… but keep posting!
    bye 🙂

  • Reply May 18, 2021

    Lucas Rocha

    How does it compare with the Focal Arche and Hugo 2?

    • Reply May 18, 2021

      Matty

      Hi Lucas, I don’t have the Arche on hand for a direct comparison but in terms of tonality they are reasonably similar-sounding – their analogue capabilities in terms of the amplification and preamp stages are about the same. The Arche is pitched more at the Focal owner, with its key selling factor being the EQ settings for those headphones. The Uniti Atom is far more capable when it comes to its streaming and digital abilities, making it a far more versatile device.

  • Reply May 18, 2021

    Noah Chen

    In comparing the dac of the Naim Uniti HFE to the Schiit Bifrost 2, it seems that you feed the output of the Bifrost into the Naim’s analog inputs: “However, this being a review website, it would be only prudent to see how the Uniti Atom performs when fed with an external DAC through its RCA inputs.” This is suspect as a way of comparing the 2 dacs; case A: digital source -> Naim digital input -> Naim internal dac -> output. case B: digital source -> Schiit -> Naim analog input -> Naim A/D -> Naim internal dac -> output.

    Get it? Because the Naim Uniti is a digital based system and runs analog inputs through an A/D converter and then through its own dac, in both cases you are listening to the Naim Uniti dac.

    If you wanted to compare the Naim dac to the Schiit dac, you would need a third device such as a purely analog headphone amp, then case A: digital source->Naim Uniti->analog headphone amp, versus case B: digital source->Schiit Bifrost->analog headphone amp.

  • Reply May 18, 2021

    SHM

    While the Uniti Atom Headphones Headphone Edition seems to be excellent in all the ways you’ve noted, I’m bewildered why this isn’t compared to the Matrix Audio Element X, which has nearly identical abilities, if not quite as flashy an interface or remote. And they are almost identically priced.

    • Reply May 18, 2021

      Matty Graham

      Hi mate, it’s not always possible to have gear available for direct comparisons – especially when we’re talking about similarly expensive items, as you’ve pointed out. The Matrix device does look like it competes in this space, but not having heard it I can’t provide any thoughts on it.

  • Reply May 19, 2021

    MhtLion

    I disagree. If the headphone amp of $3,299 product cannot beat $399 standalone headphone amp – I think it’s a complete shi**y proposition. Just my personal opinion.

  • Reply June 4, 2021

    Nicholas Chan

    I can’t believe they are still using a 10/100 connection… It’s year 2021….

  • Reply September 5, 2021

    Dubreuil

    Hello.
    I am surprised by your claim that the Naim Uniti Atom Headphone Edition has a Dac Burr-Brown, like it’s brother, the Uniti Atom, and therefore capable of decoding digital files up to 32bit / 384kHz. However, if I am not mistaken, this is not correct, it is equipped with a DAC from Texas Instrument, and moreover cannot decode 32 bits, but only 24 bits / 192 kHz; It is off the mark. I don’t understand either, why you describe “inputs”: 2x Optical S / PDIF in 96kHz, Coaxial RCA (up to 24bit / 192kHz, DoP 64Fs), whereas obviously, they are outputs. In short, a lot of imprecision.

    • Reply September 5, 2021

      Matty Graham

      Hi Dubreuil, thanks for taking an interest in the article. Burr Brown Audio is owned by Texas Instruments, so yes – you are technically correct. The specifications I received state that the unit is capable of decoding up to PCM 384kHz via USB and network inputs, but it’s clear that there isn’t a super detailed breakdown of parts of specifications on the product page and there is some variance between retailers and distributors. I can promise you that the listed digital inputs are in fact inputs, not outputs – I tested them, and the label that says ‘digital inputs’ above the connections is also a bit of a giveaway.

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