FiiO X5 High Resolution Lossless Music Player

by people ...

Product Specifications

Powerful dual core processor handles all modern lossless formats at up to 192kHz/24B
Supports DSD, APE, FLAC, ALAC, WMA, and WAV
TI PCM1792A DAC, OPA1612 and LMH6642 op amps for ultra low noise, dynamic, and musical rendering
Aluminum unibody construction with premium finish and finely crafted switch gear.
Dual microSD card slots supports 128GB cards for 256GB total

Product Description

When we set out to build the X5 into the most advanced digital music player, we started with a powerful dual core CPU so that it can play the most demanding audio formats such as DSD, APE, FLAC, ALAC, WMA, and WAV, all without a hint of strain, even at 192kHz/24-bit. Furthermore, we added advanced playback controls including song cueing, multi-profile EQ, 120-step volume control, and gapless playback. The X5 handles all of this with ease while rendering a fast and fluid user interface that is amazingly responsive. Powerful is powerful.

Use the X5 to have your music - all your music - with you anywhere life takes you. It doesn’t limit you with a fixed internal storage and is equipped with two microSD card slots, each supporting the currently available 128GB cards for 256GB total possible storage. With user-swappable storage cards and future support for OTG USB storage drives, the X5 gives you practically limitless access to storage.

Of course it takes more than just powerful hardware to play music; it takes finesse, control, and passion. In the X5, the music starts with a TI PCM1792A DAC laying a foundation of incredible dynamics and low noise floor. It then builds with a quartet of OPA1612 op amps for conversion and shaping. Lastly a pair of LMH6642 op amps faithfully amplifies the music while preserving every detail, pushing a rewarding dose of musical ecstasy to your headphones.

To make the X5 tough, strong, and beautiful to hold and rest your eyes upon, we built it with aluminum unibody construction. CNC’d from a block of aluminum, it is matte black anodized and hand assembled with finely crafted switch gear for clean lines and tight seams. A bold and bright 2.4” IPS screen displays menus, text, and album art with spectacular visual fidelity. Your enjoyment is not just limited to your ears as all your senses are rewarded by the X5.

So when you want to have the best music playback experience, start with the FiiO X5.

Product Reviews

Great sound and I want to love it, but many reasons for concern.

I bought this unit after suffering through Cowon products for years, the only players I could find that would accommodate my varied-format, high-resolution, music collection. Sadly, the Cowon products seem to only get worse and worse over the years. So when my last one died (after two months), I decided to hold out until the X5 was released. I’ve had the unit for two weeks now and here is what I’ve found:GOOD- The sound quality is pretty amazing. At first I thought it was flat, but I think part of that perception was based on being accustomed to Cowon units. You’ll find that the details of the music are audible throughout the entire range, from low to high. If you’re used to heavy, low-end EQ tweaking with Cowon settings, this might be what’s throwing you off. In reality, you’re getting really clean, balanced sound. And I find that I hear things I’ve never heard before listening to music on this unit, even with lower-resolution files. This is the only unit I’ve ever had that brings my more expensive headphones to life. I have Sennheiser HD 280 Pros and Momentums. I thought I had wasted my money on the Momentums until I listened to them on this unit. Even in the car, it makes the cheap speakers sound better. The EQ for this device kind of sucks. There aren’t a lot of presets and in my opinion they are all a little too similar. Also, you only have one EQ setting you can customize and save, which seems silly since this device is obviously for audiophiles. However, since the sound is so clean and balanced, I am starting to notice that I like being able to play any style music and not have to monkey with the EQ because of the consistency.- The unit is powerful enough to drive my headphones and even push decent sound through audio in my car.BAD- The screen is extremely small and hard to read. It isn’t easily visible in bright sunlight.- The jack for the 3.5mm headphones doesn’t allow the pin to seat properly. At best, you just don’t realize you haven’t plugged it in all the way. At worse, the vibration from the car actually makes it repeatedly pop out. Since it seems too tight, this is something that could go away with time… I hope.- You’re trading off clunky hardware and software design for the superior sound performance: heavy on the engineering, light on the user experience. For example, having two micro SD cards and having to choose and drill down into the separate menus is clever but annoying after about the hundredth time you do it. Even though you “might” be able to get the unit up and running without instructions, there are things you won’t be able to do without the manual.- That last point is a problem, since the unit only comes with a quick-start guide. The Fiio web site wouldn’t even load some pages when I went there and it took me 20 minutes to download the user guide.- I’m already experiencing technical bugs and huge concerns about warranty coverage and technical support after only two weeks (see below for details). This caused me to run out and buy a SquareTrade warranty. With an investment of $400 plus almost $100 in micro SD cards, spending yet another $100 to protect my supposed high-end unit does not making me feel warm and fuzzy about Fiio.- The screen has glitched out on me twice, but both times began working after powering it down. The first time it happened was when I powered the unit up after its first charge; everything on the screen was mirrored in reverse. The second time, a few days ago, the screen showed garbled, snow noise.- The upper right button by the scroll wheel is supposed to control navigation, and short and long presses produce different behavior. However, it doesn’t behave as described. Oftentimes, instead of taking me up in the menu tree, it jumps back to the home page. This is extremely annoying and tedious.- A few days ago, the unit would do everything but play files. Navigation and settings all worked. But I clicked the scroll wheel to start the track, and it showed the “play” icon, but nothing happened.- This last bug finally drove me to contact both Fiio and the seller about the unit. After two weeks with this many issues, I am really asking myself how long this thing will last, and whether I wanted to keep it. This led me to even more concerns.- Fiio has no U.S. phone number for support. At first I couldn’t get their site to load (come on, how could you have a web site that is this slow, not just isolated, two times in two weeks?!). Contact page is hidden. Once you get there, you are lucky if you notice the strangely formatted e-mail link.- I submitted a ticket on Friday evening and received an automated response telling me they were on an extended weekend vacation for Labor Day holiday in China. Monday morning I checked my e-mail and the ticket had been closed as “resolved,” even though I never spoke to them.- At the same time I submitted a return request to the seller on Amazon and they did the same thing, closing the request before I responded. This is when I discovered that the vendor Emusic Enterprise on Amazon is actually Fiio. Nice that they are gouging customers! They charged me $399 for this unit when their retailers are selling it for $349. Unscrupulous.- I’ve since tried looking into updating the firmware. Fiio leans on this heavily as a solution for problems and also a means to add more features and future-proof the unit. Apparently you must have a 32GB micro SD card, no bigger. So if you went out and bought 64GB cards, rejoice in the fact that you’re going to have to spend more money on this unit (read: project). Also, I work with computers, and the only place I’ve ever seen these kinds of complicated firmware upgrade instructions are in admin guides for networking equipment.IN CONCLUSION:I want to love this thing, but it’s yet another music-nerd device that delivers fantastic sounds with serious drawbacks and huge reasons for concern. I will not be surprised if I’m cashing in the SquareTrade warranty soon - that is if I don’t return it in the next few days for a refund.——–ADDENDUM - AFTER ONE MONTH OF USE:I’ve never had an Amazon review that generated such a quantity of feedback, questions, and debate, so here are some other points for potential buyers and Fiio to consider (Fiio - please use the feedback in this forum to fix your next generation player. You could have a slam dunk if you pay attention to the things people are pointing out here).I’ve kept the unit and made it work for me. I’m still impressed with the sound, which is why I kept it, despite the shortcomings mentioned above. Most of the issues above, the bad design issues, persist, but I have a few other things to add that are worth considering if you purchase:- As other readers have pointed out, the setups with the lockscreen button are pretty annoying. Tons of fun having to go through these sequences to access the unit and adjust volume, etc.- The unit responds sluggishly. I guess maybe the microprocessor in this thing isn’t so zippy? When you’re using next/last buttons to go through songs, you have a lag of several seconds, unlike most other players, that will start playing the next track right away.- In the comments section, I mention how the unit doesn’t retain the position of where you are at in the directory in its memory. If you navigate away from the track you are on, or turn the unit off, you have to manually navigate to the same directory again or wherever it is you want to go. This is absurd, even more so because it shows two separate memory cards instead of displaying all the storage as one logical drive. Imagine being deep in a directory on your PC, accessing lots of files there that you need. But every time you get one, the directory window closes, and you have to start from the beginning to find it. Dumb. Dumb.- Battery life is pretty craptastic. I think the claim in the specs is 10 hours. Maybe I am getting close to that, which I think is pretty sad and strange considering this thing uses solid-state memory. However, the other problem here is that the unit can only be powered by a source with a certain voltage/amp output. This means you won’t be able to power it using laptops, the USB ports in your car, etc. And even when those USB sources do work, it takes something like 8 hours to charge it. I had to buy special 12V adapters for my vehicles so I could charge this unit. Believe me, you are going to need one, too, if you listen to your music a lot. This unit won’t make it through a road trip without going dead. And I guarantee if you listen to it a lot, you will frequently find yourself with no way to charge it until you get home.

Perfectly awesome - for me, YMMV

This replaced my X3 not for any better reason than my wife wanted the X3. After reading all the reviews on here it seemed like there were 2 camps - those that seemed to want all the convenience of the system they already knew and those that wanted the best sound they could find (for the price).So yes, you could say the interface is kind of meh (I like it) especially if you are used to the polish and ease of an iPod (although iTunes was the reason my wife wanted out of her iPod, and face it, even in Apple forums iTunes is the most widely disparaged Apple product out there.) But honestly, after using the X3 for a year or so, its all pretty intuitive and that knowledge transfers over to the X5. It took my wife all of a day to feel comfortable with the controls on the X3. The X5 was perfectly usable out of the box; even with a few more enhanced controls than the X3 it only took me a few minutes (ok, maybe an hour or so) of flipping through menus to play with controls, find everything, and organize the way I wanted. Never had an issue with the control wheel or menu selections others have mentioned.I am at a loss as to why anyone would say any other player out there sounds just as good or better for less money. I would maybe argue those folks just shouldn’t waste money on this product? If what you have is great, why are you looking for something different? Just so you can disparage it and talk about how great what you had was? That’s what it looks like from the comments here…My wife had consistently argued that her iPod was perfectly fine, she just wanted out of iTunes. After one day of using the X3 she can’t imagine going back or believe how much “more” of her music she can hear. I came from a Zune (yah yah, no need to throw stones) and the X3 and X5 are clearly superior. I can’t speak to HiFiMan products, but I understand they are quite good… for a price. I know there are other brands that are significantly more expensive that may be better as well, but the X5 is as good as I’ve heard. I’m also using all lossless formats now which I couldn’t before, so maybe that’s a positive impact as well.For use-case comparison, I use the X5 either through a pair of Phiaton MS400 Carbon Fiber headphones or in my truck - Alpine head unit, JL Audio amp, Image Dynamics speakers front and rear, sound dampening mats all around - not a car audio show level kind of system, but its definitely not your average car stereo.Listen, some folks will like this product, others won’t. Its too bad some of the folks here can’t be gracious enough to accept that one size doesn’t fit all. I would just say if you’re willing to make the investment (and it does take time) in regularly checking for updated FW on the FiiO website (they put out quite a few FW updates - I find that awesome - always a fix or improvement on the way!) and loading it and willing to learn a new method of using controls, then go for it. I think you’ll hear the difference in a positive way. Oh and I should mention - let’s not forget the hours of converting (for iTunes folks) all of your AAC tunes to MP3, recreating your playlists, etc etc. If you think that all sounds like too much hassle then don’t bother. Stay where you are and stay happy with what you have.Just a quick note too - build quality seems great, included rubber cover seems fine, but I just ordered a leather wallet style case just because. The only thing I’ve found that I wish it had is a physical lock switch like the X3. It’s powered up once in my pocket because I couldn’t lock it out. No real biggie though.

Great sound, clumsy interface

A great music player with great sound. The upgradability of the dual microSD cards is a cool feature and on the whole the unit is quite robust.

Wanted to like it.

I really wanted to like this. I stuck with it till I had to send it back.Take it out of the box, impressive. Well made, sturdy, attractive.

Five Stars

I find best used w/ over-the-ear phones

Great player at a good price if you can find …

Great player at a good price if you can find one. The new 3rd generation is a much better player but twice the price (well worth it). Screen is a bit small.

Five Stars

My first high res device, awesome

Can’t get any better than this

I have owned many high quality players including the x1,Cowan,iPod 5.5 classic and ibasso but this one is superior to everything in its path,However the right kind of headphones…