FiiO X3-II High Resolution Music Player (2nd Generation)

The FiiO X3 (2nd Generation) has been the best purchase I have made in a long time. As a HUGE music enthusiast, I spent days looking for the highest quality alternative to mp3 players and iPods in addition to better quality speakers and headphones that I can afford. My problem is I am always on a budget, so I can't spend hundreds of dollars (most often unnecessarily as some audiophiles do). I wanted something better; something awesome to play higher resolution audio and to truly improve my listening experience overall. In our days where highly compressed audio is the norm, I stand against the ways things have become. Have you ever watched a DVD in a Blu-ray player? Get my point? Anyway, my point is higher resolution sounds better with the right equipment, and the X3 is an excellent choice, and not even just for FLAC files. MP3s also sound better with this wonderful little device. The X3 is the ANSWER to all of the above. It sounds AMAZING. Progressive Metal/Rock and my older 80's and 90's albums have never sounded so good. I haven't felt this excited about listening to music since I was 14 years old and I ran to Newbury Comics to buy the latest CD releases and would sit down in front of my stereo and make mixed tapes, and later CDs. I'll end this review with a quick list of Pros and 1 Con. Pros: The X3's built is beautiful (high quality aluminium alloy). When you hold it, it feels well-made. The sound stage is fantastic. You get the highs, the lows, and all in between. The vocals and bass are so clear. This is the way music should be heard. Give "Welcome to the Machine" by Pink Floyd a spin in this, and you'll see for yourself. Simply wonderful listening experiencing. I sometimes don't want to stop listening. Oh, and the storage capacity (microSD card only) is up to 128 G. I bought a 64 G microSD on Amazon for $23! Can't go wrong here. For $199.99 plus the cheaper cost of an SD card, the X3 is SO WORTH IT, and better than any iPod or other mp3 player up to the $500 price range. Con: The UI could be a bit more convenient and the display is not as great. With a little creativity, you could get around this since the file management is your PC's or Mac's. Bottom line of this long review: Buy this beautiful DAP with a GOOD set of headphones (not IPod buds or some basic set). You won't regret it. I absolutely love mine!

This is by far one of the best sounding DAPs I've ever listened to. For my budget it met every expectation possible, not only that but I've never actually personally owned a DSD decoder so being able to listen to those files on demand especially while working is a great luxury. I have sampled a lot of formats at this point, if your collection consists of a lot of high quality FLAC you're going to love it, although it still brings new life into my lossy formats as well. For frame of reference, my testing equipment has consisted of Sennheiser Momentums, as well as the coax and line out outputs. All work flawlessly and have warm clear sound. I would be hesitant to say that it is capable of driving larger cans, the output of the X3ii is 200mw <(200mW'@32''224mW'@16''24mW (@300') according to ea audio uk>. For my purposes this is more than sufficient, you can argue about output and impedance all day for all I care, I know what I hear and for what I'm looking for this is perfect. I listen between 74/120 volume to 88/120 volume depending on mastering and its plenty loud with 9.5/10 accurate sound reproduction. I still would like to try it with a headphone amp like the MontBlanc, but I don't really have any desire to upgrade and sacrifice portability. The EQ is pretty good for what it is, although I tend to leave it off and let the individual mastering of the track speak for itself. The Momentums are good for this purpose, however I did encounter overly bright mids in a few tracks (probably due to mastering or vinyl reproduction errors) which I was able to EQ out and it sounded better. Technically its no longer an accurate reproduction of the high fidelity track if you're EQing it. I think though that's what I enjoy most about this player, it has very serious aspects yet remains absolutely practical and most importantly simple to use and enjoyable. Included in the box is a silicon glove style case, three protective wrap cases, and two extra screen protectors. Mine is resting in the accessory clear case, however for most the included silicon is probably sufficient. I really hope I didn't get a clone from Amazon, I'll be returning if I did, but the build quality is the only place where I would possibly say its lacking, and when I say lacking I mean in Quality Control not design or production. One button on my X3ii is not the same as the rest on the face, it does not press as accurately or as well and seems a bit ajar. Scroll wheel center button slides around. My biggest gripe is the USB port. Using the included USB cable I have copied files from my computer, rather than just using my micro SD card reader. Don't ask me why, just thought it would be as efficient. I was dead wrong. Copy speed bottlenecks at around 3-5 mb/s, as well as several of my high quality lossless files had a bunch of data missing when compared to the source file. This really concerns me, if data is being lost over USB then my sense is that using it as a DAC (which I have yet to do, will report back when I have) could potentially suffer from signal loss. This very well could be the USB cable, or worse the USB port, the cable was supplied so I was inclined to trust it. From now on I'm just going to transfer directly to the microsd from the card reader. All in all, TLDR: sound quality is really good, I've found it perfect for my needs and spent a lot of time looking around. Be advised of output and have realistic expectations. There are several alternatives that are at least worth looking at, iBasso, HiDiz, Astell and Kern, as well as the FiiO x5 and x5ii (to be released next week at time of writing). I speak not out of actual listening experience with most of these devices, but with my own research and personal listening tests of Astell Kern products as well as Apple, FiiO, and Sony.

I want a simple, good-sounding portable music device that includes a micro-SD card in its design. Also, I really do not want to spend more than a coupla hundred bucks. I read the reviews, and opted for the X3-II. the item arrived swiftly, I then took steps to put it to use; I charged it up, then slapped a 128GB micro SD card into it, loaded it up with tons of WAVs (using WMP), and plugged it in (via the line-out into a Y cable) into the digital input of my integrated amplifier. Yes the UI is truly clunky, but who cares- it sounded great! I listened to it for a few hours and I knew that I could really like this thing. Later that night, I tested it with headphones. The headphone jack was faulty; one channel was loud and clear, but the other would flicker in and out if I jiggled the base of the wire. From my experience with a few digital music players, this is generally the Achilles' Heel of such devices. But Damn! Straight off the Shelf?!?!? Well, I am a forgiving person, and I do believe that everybody deserves a second chance. And I am a sucker, so I returned it, and bought another one. The second X3 arrived, I charged, synced, and loaded it; I then went straight to the headphones. Again the headphone jack proved to be faulty. I read the reviews, and this is generally a well-liked device. So either I have had the most uncanny misfortune, or there is a pattern here. I suspect that on both occasions, I was sold returned merchandise, despite the fact that it was not advertised as such. I give it two stars. The UI sucks, but is good enough, and it sounds really nice. But what good is that if it is shoddy and malfunctioning?

Update (9/20/2016). I realized that after the release of the iPhone 7 and Apple's "courageous" move to abandon the 3.5 mm headphone jack in order to steer you all towards proprietary Lightning headphones or wireless Beats headphones (either way is more $$$s for Apple), that the X3ii is no longer largely redundant, but could actually be rather useful to somebody that owns a decent pair of headphones, so I'm upgrading my rating on this product. I would also like to publicly apologize for having defended Apple in my original review. That will never happen again. Original review below... ------------------------------- The second generation Fiio X3 is a gorgeous device that comes beautifully packaged with a plethora of useful accessories, including screen protectors, stickers/decals, digital-out cables and even a silicon case. Fiio has worked hard to justify the $200 price point. The important question is, should you buy one? There are two main scenarios: 1) You don't currently own any type of digital audio player. 2) You already own a digital audio player, but the Fiio X3 2nd gen is going to sound better. In all probability, neither of these situations will apply to you. Firstly, (as of writing) this is 2015. Everybody already owns a DAP of some type (for example, your smartphone). Even if you don't own any kind of DAP, you can purchase a current-gen iPod touch for the same price as the 2nd gen X3. An iPod touch (or small Android tablet) will do way more than just play music, so situation 1) shouldn't apply to anybody. So let's look at the second situation - the X3ii is going to sound better than that iPod touch or your existing smartphone, right? After all, the X3ii is a high-res audio player, capable of 24/192 playback!? The bottom line here is, no, the X3ii will not improve the sound you get from a good-quality modern (2014+) smartphone or DAP. I’ll elaborate on why below... Out of the box, the X3ii is easy to operate. Some people have complained about Fiio's user interface, but I have no complaints with the X3 2nd gen’s 1.1 firmware. It's responsive, intuitive and easy to use (you won’t even need the small user manual that comes with it). After loading several 24/192 tracks from HDTracks and Dr. Chesky, I was wowed. It sounded great! I immediately thought this sounded better than my current iPhone 6. But I'm a scientist and I don't trust the human brain (including mine) not to be influenced by expectation bias, so I started doing some AB tests using my patented Trader Joe's Green Tea Mint AB switch (image attached). I know, I know. I can hear the true audiophiles baying already. I realize I should have lead-shielded the switch and also tested a vanilla-mint version, but the switch and tiny extra cable runs makes no difference to what I can hear or measure. Next, I used Audiofile Engineering’s Sample Manager to downsample the 24/192 files into 44.1 kHz and 16 bit (MBIT+) dither and finally into FLAC format, which I loaded into CanOpener on my iPhone (since Apple refuses to support FLAC directly in iTunes or on the iPhone’s native music player). I should probably mention the FLAC files ended up about 10 times smaller than the original 24/192 aif files. The result? The 16/44 FLAC also sounded great! The same beautiful-sounding recordings, free of that nasty dynamic-range compression that plagues most modern music. Yay for a good master! So next, I connected this to my AB switcher, volume-matched the output with a SPL meter and compared iPhone FLAC and X3ii aif (using no EQ on either device). Every sample sounded identical on the iPhone. Now I was sad and disappointed in my new toy :-( The fact that the 24/192 sample sounded the same as the 16/44 was no surprise: http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html However, I was expecting to hear some improvements - or at least some differences - as a result of the differences in the DAC and amp. I’ve owned many different DACs and amps and have always been able to pick out differences (sometimes significant differences) between the coloration or frequency-response of the various pieces of hardware. I also tried comparing a variety of ALAC files from good-quality recordings (Glass Hammer, Pink Floyd, Steven Wilson). In testing with Etymotic’s ER4S, I couldn’t detect even a change in sound signature. The output impedance of the X3 is lower (<0.2 Ohm/32 Ohm load) than that of the iPhone 6 (<3 Ohm), which should be a win for the X3ii, but even so, the differences on a more sensitive IEM (~9 Ohm SE846) were barely perceptible. The X3ii amp does play a lot louder than the iPhone 6 and the X3ii’s default volume level (when you first turn it on) is very loud - far louder than any volume I ever use on my iPhone. That may be partly responsible for the wow factor most people get when they first hear the X3ii. (All humans think louder = better.) Some may like that extra power, but the iPhone is already easily capable of damaging your hearing. I don’t need that extra power. Anybody that is serious about their audio ought to be extremely careful with their one piece of non-replaceable and non-repairable audio hardware. Loading music on to the X3ii is a drag and drop procedure. There seems to be some (ambiguous) limit to the number of files the X3ii can handle and the indexing software can fail if it finds a single file it doesn't like (at which point you appear to need to start all over again with a freshly-formatted SD card). The music-transfer process certainly isn't as seamless as an iTunes sync, but for some, it might be worth it to be out of Apple's jail. There are some other possible advantages of the X3ii. It plays all kinds of file formats. It takes standard microSD (up to 128 Gb, FAT32-formatted) and can be used both as a player from its microSD card, or from an attached USB device (which essentially enables you to bring an unlimited amount of music with you). That is the only redeeming feature I can see, but even this is a bit debatable as most people these days can stream unlimited music (even lossless, e.g. via Tidal). You can also use the X3ii as a DAC and it does have a much lower noise floor than my Macbook Pro, but most of the time I use my phone for music and there I can’t notice much difference in the noise floor (correction - see update at end of this review), even with my SE846. If it doesn't sound any better than a modern smartphone's DAC why would I want to carry (and have to remember to charge) one extra device? I don't intend to start any flame wars here and this review is not a personal insult to the mother of any X3ii owners out there. I also do not want to get into an argument with those 24/192 fans that claim to be able to hear the improvement over 16/44. That argument is done and dusted as far as I’m concerned. I don’t believe in fairies or pixies or that the earth is flat or that humans can hear above 22 kHz and I won’t get drawn into an argument about it. But I am truly curious as to why people are rating this device so highly. It's a very good music player, but so is the smartphone you already own. If you purchase an X3ii and make a volume-matched AB comparison with your phone, you may be disappointed with your X3ii purchase. Right now, I'm on the fence with it. As much as I like the device, I cannot see much justification for keeping it. The X3ii does have a ton of features, so maybe I’m missing something? Is there a good reason for me to keep it that I’m overlooking? I would genuinely be interested to hear from other X3ii owners. Update 7/2/2015: After more extensive listening with my SE846 IEMs, I have noticed one consistent difference in the noise floor between the X3ii and the iPhone 6(+). If you have some sensitive, low impedance headphones (the SE846 are about 9 Ohms @ 1 kHz), try playing the first 20 seconds of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon (lossless version) on both an iPhone 6(+) and X3ii. Turn the volume up (just for those initial 20 seconds) and you'll hear the X3ii has noticeably more hiss in between the heartbeats. Update 7/12/2015: The end of this story is that I sent my X3ii back and replaced it with an X5ii. Even though I much prefer the size and weight (and even the sound signature) of the X3ii, I couldn't get past the noise floor issue. Once I became aware of the hiss, I noticed I could hear it in every quiet passage, and even when the X3ii was in pause mode. I just couldn't unhear it at that point :-(

First, let me tell you about myself and my reasoning for buying this product. I am not an audio expert but I love music! As a kid I was a member of the Columbia Record Club (I’m showing my age). I have migrated from vinyl to 8 track tapes to cassettes to CD’s and now to digital. My vinyl records, 8 track and cassette tapes have long disappeared but I have a fairly sizable CD collection; my guess is around 500. Like most, my first digital music player was an iPod. I have purchased music from iTunes, converted you tube music to MP3 files and imported CD’s to create my library. I’ve enjoyed listening to my music but I knew something was missing in the sound quality so I did my research. My sole intent was to get better sound quality from my existing iPod. This is when I found out about the MP3 file format vs. the lossless format. I’m not sophisticated enough (nor do I care to be) to get into the weeds on this but the bottom line is that MP3 files are missing some of the “data” from the original music. This was done to save space i.e. to get more music stored on your computer and your portable music player, but sound quality suffers. The lossless format is not missing “data” so the sound quality is better. Logically, this made sense to me. So the easy answer for me was to make sure that iTunes supported the lossless format and, if so, convert my music library to this lossless format, right? Wrong! As it turns out, iTunes does support a lossless format (their version, more on that later) but you can’t convert an MP3 file because it is missing the data. That data was not compressed, it is actually missing. The good news is that you can download any music that you previously purchased from iTunes again, free of charge, using their lossless format. This is easy to do and you can find help on the internet. But for the CD’s that I imported, I have to import them again making sure that I have the import settings set to do so using Apple lossless format. Problem solved, right? Wrong! Although the sound quality is better, it is still not great. The issue is that, although Apple makes a great product, the iPod was not designed to produce high fidelity sound so I ended up with high quality audio files but not so good hardware for playing them. Look, I just want two things: 1. My music to sound better through my ear phones and in my car, the way I remember it sounding before digital, and 2. I want it to be easy. So I did more research. I found that there is a category of High Resolution portable music players available and that you can spend as little as $100 or as much as $5,000. Like I said before, I like music, but I like my money more! After looking into the Fiio X3 second generation for around $200, I thought I found my answer. Turns out, I was right. The sound quality is outstanding. I can’t give you details on “highs” and “lows” and “warm” sounds like I’ve read in other reviews. Like I said, I’m not that sophisticated. I just know what sounds good and this does. It’s like night and day between this and my iPod. Granted, I did also invest in a moderately priced ($75) set of ear buds. You have to in order to get the full benefit of the player so I recommend you do so as well. However, the most noticeable improvement in sound quality is in my car. I can’t begin to describe the difference in quality but it is where I am most happy with my decision to purchase this product. So, number 1 objective achieved. Number 2, I want it easy. If you use iTunes, let me save you some time here, continue to use it. You will read some saying that you need to download Easy Audio Converter (EAC) and then rip your CD’s into FLAC files, and so on and so on. They will say that FLAC is the industry standard format for lossless, that ALAC (Apple’s lossless format) is only compatible with Apple products. They will say that FLAC is better quality than ALAC. First, this is not true. Lossless is lossless. No lossless is better than another but I was sucked in by this and tried EAC. It is complicated to use. I loaded it and ripped a few CD’s and then copied them into the Fiio X3. They did play, but the artist name, album name, track names and album artwork are not there. Turns out you have to do a lot of extra steps using another 3rd party software to get this stuff. It’s too complicated and just not worth it to me. I’m convinced that most folks that do this do so just because they have an underlying dislike for Apple. I’m not that way. My approach is just give me whatever works the best. So I imported a few CD’s into iTunes using their lossless format then copied them into the Fiio X3 and it worked beautifully. The artist name, album name, track names and album artwork is all there. And here is another plus, provided you have hard drive space, when you import the CD in lossless, you can elect to NOT cover up the prior MP3 file. This way, you can still load MP3 files on your iPod or iPhone and use them the way you always have. The only negatives I have concern playlists and ease of use in your vehicle. It is not easy to create playlists on the Fiio X3. There are instructions on how to do so on the internet but it is way too difficult. As far as using the Fiio X3 in your car, the sound is amazing but you have to connect it using the AUX in port using an AUX cable (not provided). It will not work by plugging it into the USB port using the USB cable provided (that is just for charging and data transfer). As is the case with most devices you connect via an AUX cable, you can only control it via the unit itself. That is, you select the songs you want to play, pause, skip, previous, etc. by pressing the buttons on the X3. You can’t do so through your head unit controls. (At least not in my vehicle.) Bottom line, if you want near high fidelity sound in a portable music player at a good price without sacrificing too much in the ease of use department, I highly recommend the Fiio X3.

I'm a person who never tried anything better than phone + free included headsets. I paired this device with m50x. Everything I listen to is now on a different level of quality. Even old MP3 files sound better with this setup. I'm really happy with sound quality. Battery life is great too. I took a star off because the build has some flaws. The memory slot does not click properly when the memory card is inserted and I have to eject it and re-insert multiple times to be sure it's installed. The middle button feels mushy and makes it hard to play & pause quickly. The included USB cables is of low quality and my Samsung Galaxy S6 charging cable fits in much better. Also the screen protectors have some stickers that are hard to remove. Seems like the sound quality is the only thing that's perfect in this product. Update: it died. Horrible quality. Poor reliability. Useless warranty and after sale service. Never will buy a Fiio product again after this.

I bought this unit because I own a lot of CD's so I figured instead of having to carry all my cd's I could just convert them to a lossless format and with the FIIO I could have them with me where ever I go since this this unit supports mp3 as well as several lossless formats. Everything works the way it is intended, the music was crystal clear and because I had a sound system in my car it just sounded amazing. After a year of using it the same thing started to happen as with other reviews on this site, the wheel stops working or better yet it does not scroll down as it should. Sometimes it would go past the folder/ song i'm trying to choose. The only positive thing that came from this is that now all my music is in lossless format but I will continue to use it until I can find it's replacement I doubt it will be a FIIO.

initial impression after having just got it, today: I had to answer my own question since it was too technical for most, I guess. YES, IT DOES HAVE PROPER NON-RESAMPLED HIGH RES SPDIF OUTPUT! I returned an ibasso 50 because its output on spdif was only 44.1 or 8k. what a waste. this player preserves the data format and does not resample (as far as I can tell). I have an spdif samplerate 'meter' that shows the 44.1/48/88.2/96/etc rate on any spdif stream and this really did pass the test. impressive. this is for flac files, of course. the size of the unit is perfect. not very large at all. button feel is pretty good. user interface is usable (or maybe better than just usable). the click wheel is not so great, though; they miss some steps if you go too slow or too fast (too slow? yes, it seems so). their scanning of rotary encoder logic is 'bad' (I write firmware for such things so I can spot an encoder that was not well done and I have to be honest; this one was not all that well done). they need to sample the encoder on EVERY state-change and I bet they are not. (just tech talk; ignore it if you don't quite follow). usb speed is pretty bad for some reason; I was getting about 4MB/sec transfer rate from my i7 pc to this player with a sandisk 64gb uSD card installed. not sure why its so slow. I don't expect usb3 speeds but its not even usb2 speeds, really. sound out (analog) is very good. does it power my hd650 directly? well, for office use where you don't have the volume up high, yes. for home use, not quite. but this is a hard phone to drive. for lower-z phones there will be enough drive or gain in this unit. noise level seems quite low. audio specs are, I'm sure, reasonably well met. its a very modern chip by cirrus (the dac chip). (update: I'm not sure what I was thinking of, but the cs4398 is not 'modern' except in its performance. in fact, it was released in the 2003 timeframe! quite a long time ago. but its still considered cirrus' flagship dac. otoh, cirrus now owns wolfson and wolfson's best dac was the 8741 and so its hard to say which is the 'cirrus flagship' now after the wolfson company purchase.) I have not tried dsd yet but plan to. honestly, the files are so huge, its more bragging rights to say you support dsd on portable players. one dsd file I have is 4gb long! you want that on a portable player? I don't think so! wish there was a user replacable battery. wish there was rockbox as a choice even though the factory UI is actually not all that bad. I have mixed feelings about having to turn the screen on just to change volume. otoh, you can skip tracks using the vol buttons if the screen is off. I think they consider the screen being off to be a sort of 'pocket mode' where you don't want buttons to be changing things and they give you a skip left and right (songs) that you can get to 'by feel' (again, pocket mode concept). overall, I think its a well done product. reasonable thought went into it and the price and size is right, too. and the spdif-out being honest at all the standard bitrates, that was what really sealed the deal for me. I can now use any outboard dac and this can become 'just a portable transport'. really nice!