We received a nice surprise when we were got our latest stock of Fiio goodies, the nice people at Fiio sent us over a sample of their new and upcoming E1 portable amp. The E1, unlike previous amps, is specifically an in line amp for the Apple iPod, obviously from the above picture you can tell it connects to the iPods docking port.

Many more pictures after the jump

The E1 incorporates a remote of sorts, it does seem to have 5 functional buttons for track control, volume control and a play pause button located in the center. Fiio did tell us that the E1 we have is the finalized design and the sound quality of the sample will be the same as the final version, but on the sample version the programing for the buttons still needed to be done. Now i actually don’t have any iPod’s (shock!) to test this on right now, but i will be borrow an iPod touch later today to test the amps sound quality. I am pretty much expecting all the goodness of the E5 packed into an iPod specific accessory.

Overall the build quality is very good, it will certainly look very nice when attached to an iPod, i don’t think people will have much complaint about how the amp portion of the E1 looks, however the remote may take a bit of criticism. The back casing of the E1 remote has a small clip and for the most part looks very nice, the part that may take some heat are the very clicky buttons on the front of the player. I personally don’t think they are that bad, but i do see people who have picker tastes not liking the remote due to the buttons.

I certainly think the E1’s design is very nice and will appeal to many people, but more than that, if the E1 lives up to even being like the E3, then i think many iPod owners will be clambering for this in line amp.

No pricing details yet, but should not cost more than $30.

Follow up review of the sound quality once i get my hands on a iPod to test it on.