Naim Uniti Atom Headphone Edition Music Streaming System Review

It has three digital inputs, an unbalanced RCA input, balanced and unbalanced outputs to use it as a preamplifier, and two USB inputs. And it has a Class A headphone amplifier with three separate kinds of headphone outputs. This one component does quite a few things. Its MSRP is $3799 USD. Let’s talk about what you get for that price.

Naim calls its line of all-in-one streaming devices “Uniti.” These devices combine several functionalities previously found in standalone components into a single relatively compact and network-capable device. The Naim Uniti Atom is its streaming player, and it includes a 1/8” headphone jack but with a less sophisticated headphone amp than the Atom HE. Naim added advanced headphone capability to the Uniti Atom and dubbed it the Uniti Atom Headphone Edition. And the Uniti Atom HE is both a marvel to behold and experience.

The Naim Uniti Atom HE is a gorgeous machine. It’s finished in black metal with a brushed finish that somehow absorbs the light you shine upon it. Inset into its top is a large, round volume control dial with white LED lights that visually indicate how high or low the volume is set. It has a glass screen and a series of selection buttons arranged vertically on the right. There’s also the “Naim” logo on the lower left of the unit. All of the buttons are backlit with white LEDs, which gives the entire unit a very modern, purposeful, architectural appearance. Naim did not skimp on the finish with this product. It looks and feels luxurious, as well as it should, considering its price.

The Uniti Atom HE is just one of the members of Naim’s Uniti line. There is the Uniti Atom, which is a compact music streaming player. There is the Uniti Star, which plays both CDs and music streaming. Both the standard Atom and the Star have headphone amplifiers built in, at 40W and 70W, respectively. There is the Uniti Nova, which is a music streaming player with a built-in amplifier. And there is the Uniti Core, which is a music hub with bit-perfect CD ripping functionality. And they can all be controlled with the Naim App for Android and iOS devices.

You may think the Uniti Atom HE does not weigh very much because it’s essentially a computer, but this would be a mistake. The Uniti Atom HE is a computer built around a Class A headphone amplifier with a considerable power transformer. This is why it weighs over fifteen pounds and has heat sinks on its sides.

The included remote control is made of black plastic with both matte and glossy finishes. Its buttons are backlit with white LEDs, and there’s a motion sensor that will illuminate the buttons when you move the remote. A very nice touch is that the white LEDs surrounding the circular selector button on the remote mirror the white LEDs on the volume selector dial on top of the Uniti Atom HE unit.

Out of the box, the Naim Uniti Atom HE is a single component for playing almost any kind of digital music source, and then listening to that music with headphones or through a stereo system or powered speakers. This is my first time experiencing such a component, and I must admit, I quickly came to like it quite a bit. To begin with, it showed me how I could eliminate quite a few components and their requisite cables. Putting the Uniti Atom HE into my system, and removing a big Oppo BDP-105, a Benchmark DAC1, and a RaspberryPi streamer removed two power cords, a DC power brick, two pairs of interconnects, and three digital cables all at once. That was very liberating, to tell you the truth. I’m not a big fan of clutter, and we all know the more cables you have, the more likelihood for feedback or DC noise you have. The Naim Uniti Atom HE enabled me to replace a lot of clutter with a single beautiful black box.

And if you want to play music based on black or silver discs, you can plug those particular players straight into the Uniti Atom HE. You can start with simplicity and add complexity later if you’d like.

One of the reasons the Uniti Atom HE is so versatile and compact is that it is a network-enabled device. You can listen to many sources of network-based music through the Uniti Atom HE, and all you need for that, other than subscriptions, is Ethernet or WiFi. And with WiFi, you don’t even need a cable. This opens a huge world of music source possibilities without a single extra cable or interconnect.

As of this writing in July 2022, the Naim Uniti Atom HE will stream Apple AirPlay 2, Bluetooth, Chromecast Built-in, Internet Radio, Qobuz, Roon Ready, Spotify® Connect, TIDAL, and UPnP. And there are USB ports in the front and back to play music off of sticks or drives. And that includes music in resolutions up to 32-bit/384kHz.

I auditioned the Uniti Atom HE in two ways; first, as a player dedicated to headphone listening, then as a preamplifier in my main listening system. But first, in order to use its network streaming capabilities, I had to get it configured for my WiFi network.

I use a password-protected 300MB WiFi mesh network in my home, and the Uniti Atom HE had no problem finding it. First, you use the Uniti Atom HE’s remote control to work through the menu on the unit’s view screen to find your network name and enter the password. After that, you can install the Naim App on your mobile device of choice and further configure the unit. The application will find your Uniti Atom HE on the network, you select it, and then you can enter your credentials for Qobuz, Roon, or other such streaming services.

And after I had configured it, it just worked. The Naim representative was good enough to send me a pair of the excellent Focal Clear MG headphones to listen to the Uniti Atom HE with, and that was a match made in heaven. It just so happened that I also had the HIFIMAN Arya Stealth Magnet headphones, and those also sounded great.

Through the Naim App on my iPhone, I could control all functionality of the Uniti Atom HE. If the Uniti Atom HE has a USB drive attached with FLAC files, you can see those files listed on the app. It’s the same if the Uniti Atom HE is linked to a DLRN server. You can even remotely power it on. When you’re playing music through a streaming service, like Qobuz, the app will show you the album’s cover and details, as you’d see when using the Qobuz app.

The Uniti Atom HE’s excellent color screen is 4.75” wide and 2.5” high. It will display in color the album cover and bitrate details of the music it’s currently playing. You can use the Naim App to turn the screen off while is music is played, but the Naim logo and menu buttons will remain lit. I don’t fully understand the reasoning for that and would prefer to have the capability to turn off all of the lights. For example, the power button stays lit all of the time, even when the unit is powered off. I like to have complete darkness in a listening room, but that bright white LED makes that impossible. The only way to get around that is to remove the power cable from the Uniti Atom HE. This is a minor complaint, to be sure, and I could find no other fault with this excellent component.

When using the 6.3mm and Pentaconn headphone outputs on the face of the unit, it will automatically mute the preamplifier outputs and turn on the headphone sockets. There is a headphone symbol button on the face that lights up when this happens. The XLR headphone output is in the rear of the unit, but it does not have an insertion-sense switch like the front outputs. So, in order to listen to XLR headphones, you must press the headphone symbol button.

The Uniti Atom HE’s Class A headphone amplifier outputs 1.5W per channel with an output impedance of 4.7Ohm on all of its outputs. It drove every pair of headphones I attached to it with ease.

One of my favorite activities with the Uniti Atom HE was listening to vinyl over headphones. It reminded me of being a kid, listening with big headphones with curled cables plugged into a Marantz turntable and receiver combo. Granted, that wasn’t the best sound quality, but the ability to lose myself in a record album over headphones is something I’ve always cherished. I attached the excellent Parks Audio Puffin phono preamplifier to the Uniti Atom HE with its 24-bit/96kHz Toslink output and heard very satisfying sound output. And the Uniti Atom HE also has an analog RCA input, so you can use essentially any kind of phono preamplifier with it.

At first, I listened to the Uniti Atom HE with the excellent Focal Clear MG headphones with its 4-pin balanced XLR cable. These are open-backed headphones and retail for $1500 USD. They have a frequency range of 5Hz to 28kHz, a 55 Ohm impedance, and are 104dB sensitive. They are also quite neutral and revealing. And they both look and sound gorgeous. Focal and Naim are partner companies, so it is natural to think the Uniti Atom HE and the Clear MGs would work well together, and they do.

I then listened to the HIFIMAN Arya Stealth Magnet headphones. These use planar magnetic drivers, have a frequency range of 8Hz to 65kHz, a 32 Ohm impedance, and are 94dB efficient. Their MSRP is $1,299USD. So, they differ from the Focal Clear MG headphones by having a wider frequency range but a lower impedance and sensitivity, which means they’ll need more power. But the Uniti Atom HE’s Class A amplifier enabled the Aryas to sound their best. I find the Aryas to be slightly faster than the Clear MGs, and the music was engaging with excellent frequency response with the Uniti Atom HE.

I then put the Uniti Atom HE in my main listening system as a preamplifier. I attached its outputs to my Orchard Audio Starkrimson Stereo Ultra amplifier with XLR cables. The speakers used were the Polk Audio Legend L600s . I then connected an Oppo UDP-205 with digital coax and my Xbox Series X with Toslink to the Uniti Atom HE. One nice feature of the Naim App is that you can rename the sources in the menu, so Digital 1 became “Oppo” and Digital 3 became “Xbox.”

Once powered up, the Uniti Atom HE found my WiFi network again automatically and I was good to go. I now had a network-capable intelligent control center in my system. And if I chose to keep this setup, I could eliminate my disc player, my preamp, my DAC, and several cables.

I should point out that the Oppo UDP-205 is also technically a network-capable player. It is Roon Ready, it can access local DLRN or SAN servers, and will pull disc information from the Internet. It also has digital inputs and outputs and will play digital music on USB storage devices. However, you must use the Oppo’s remote control to access these functions. And the Oppo does not have a built-in view screen, so it must be attached to an external monitor. I know Oppo released iOS applications, but I could never get them to work well and found them difficult to use.

And that’s just one of the ways the Naim Uniti Atom HE has the Oppo beat. The Naim App is feature rich and mobile, so I could control what I was hearing over my system with my phone from anywhere in the house. I enjoyed that feature much more than I thought I would. But Oppo no longer sells its disc players and its software will never be updated. But I am fairly confident Naim will be around for the long run and they’ll keep their mobile applications and their network-capable devices updated.

At a price of $3,799.95USD, the NAIM UNITI ATOM HE is a major investment for a lot of people.

However, this single unit can act as the centralized brain of a stereo system when used as a preamplifier, but it’s also a brain that can be attached to a network, which greatly expands the capability of a typical preamplifier. I enjoyed the quality and convenience of the Naim Uniti Atom HE so much I am considering selling off older components to fund the purchase of one.

The Naim Uniti Atom HE is expensive but extremely versatile. Its appearance, construction, and materials befit what you pay for it. You can extend it with essentially any kind of source, whether analog or digital, and you can attach it to a network, whether wired or wireless. It is scalable, because you can attach other components in the Naim Uniti line to it, and you can update its operating system. The Naim App is a joy to use, it sounds great with headphones, and it can act as the control center for almost any kind of audio system. Recommended.