Who says portable hi-res audio players have to be expensive? Not FiiO. Adrian Justins asks if the X1 is as cheerful as it is cheap
If you’ve been itching to get into portable hi-res audio but can’t justify the outlay of an expensive player, the FiiO X1 is here to try and lure you in. At a whisker under £100 this is by far the most affordable hi-res digital audio player (DAP), with its closest competitors being the Sony NWZ-A15 and FiiO’s own X3 Mk 2, both of which sell for £159.
Given that serious audiophile hi-res players from the likes of Sony, Acoustic Research and Astell&Kern usually command a four figure price, or several £100s at the very least, you have to wonder whether the X1 has got what it takes to compete. One significant shortcoming is a complete absence of built-in storage. Instead, it has a microSD slot that can accept cards up to 128GB, which should provide enough capacity for around 4,000 24/96 FLAC tracks.
Unless you already own a compatible card you can expect to shell out around £10 for 32GB of storage and £50-£60 for 128GB. It’s a bit of a kick in the teeth really because while you expect to provide your own storage card for a digital camera you simply don’t when it comes to portable audio players. To be fair to FiiO though, it isn’t shy in communicating the trade off of storage for a lower price in its publicity and marketing materials.
The rival Sony NWZ-A15 comes with 16GB of memory built in (and has an SD expansion slot), while the FiiO X3 Mk 2 is also bereft of built-in storage, its USP over the X1 and Sony being compatibility with native DSD and DXD files and USB DAC operation.
Otherwise in terms of the X1’s spec shortcomings nothing stands out on paper, although only a USB cable is provided and no plug or charger (only an issue if you don’t wish to use a computer or existing USB chargers). What it does have is a handy line out, plus a TI PCM5142 chipset that is compatible with APE, FLAC, ALAC, WMA and WAV lossless music formats, up to 24-bit/192kHz. Remote control support is provided for the likes of Apple and Samsung inline headphones, allowing you to pause, play, fast forward and rewind tracks, although perhaps annoyingly not control the volume.
The player weighs a pocket-friendly 106g and is more compact than a pack of 20 cigarettes. It’s similar to a 6th generation iPod Classic in terms of weight and dimensions as well as design and operation.
Pleasingly, FiiO eschews the trend for exceptionally hard edges found on many other DAPs, and the X1 has nice rounded corners. The build quality is commensurate with the price, and the unit feels somewhat plasticky. Available in gold or silver, it appears impressive in photos but in real life it looks every inch a piece of sprayed plastic. It’s a shame, because the buttons and scroll wheel themselves look and feel superior. The saving grace is that the unit is supplied with a black rubberised silicon case, which protects and covers the body (but annoyingly hides the LED that lights up to tell you if the unit is being charged), or you can plaster it with stickers, which FiiO has strangely opted to provide.
The scroll wheel grips nicely and has decent resistance when you drag it round to select items from the menu or control the volume, but the central select button feels slightly loose. External buttons provide track transport duties, plus there’s a Back button for navigation. It’s a shame there isn’t a Home button as you don’t always want to work your way back through folders to get to the home screen. Oddly, though, depending on how a track is selected and played, pressing the Back button can act as a Home screen button, which can be annoying if you want to browse the folder/album/playlist that contains it. It all depends what screen was showing previous to the playback in progress and is a tad baffling to deal with. Another annoyance is that the screen can only display track information briefly (artist, album, format, resolution and bit-rate) and it superimposes it on top of the album artwork, often leading to hard to read clashes of words and pictures.
This is exacerbated by the clarity of the screen, washed out colour scheme and font that’s so small at times it’s like looking through back-to-front binoculars. Having said all that, generally the operating system is well laid out and divided into sections such as settings, browsing, etc. The cursor moves quickly and the system responds promptly to selections. One nice touch about the design is that supplementary volume buttons on the left side are lower in profile than the adjacent power button, making it easier to select them by touch.
Loading music is relatively straightforward. With an SD card placed in the slot and the player connected by the USB cable to a computer, the card appears as an external drive on the desktop. On an iMac I am able to drag and drop until I fill the card, and all metadata and sleeve art is carried over. To preserve playlists from iTunes you have to create new folders on your desktop first and the only other faff is that you have to tell the player to update the media library after disconnecting from the computer. You can, however, manually build new playlists using the X1’s GUI, and save favourite tracks.
Sound quality
Output can be tweaked using the built-in EQ, which has seven adjustable bands between 62Hz and 16kHz, plus there are seven genre presets. Pairing the X1 with Sony’s MDR-10RC, which are decent lightweight hi-res headphones, the first and most important observation about the X1 is that the built-in DAC and amp are adept at extracting all of the sonic juice from the fruit of most hi-res tunes. Be it FLAC, ALAC or AIFF files, delivery is smooth, finely detailed and nicely rounded off with a hint of warmth. The soundstage is perhaps a bit narrow, Mozart’s Violin Concerto No.4 in D Major (AIFF) for example feeling a little spatially cramped and not as airy as it could be. But it is possible to get a much more satisfying sound out of the X1 than it first offers up.
The flat response is weighted too keenly towards the lower end of the midrange and requires some EQ adjustment to reduce some of the overzealous bass extension. The Metal preset boosts the upper mids and works out as a pretty good option for use as the default setting.
The bass on Bon Jovi’s Army Of One (FLAC) goes from sounding rather dull and fl abby to a punchier, quicker attack, allowing the mids of the guitar and vocals a bit more fl ight thanks to improved extension and greater transparency. Also with the Metal preset engaged, a 24/96 FLAC file of Steely Dan’s Time Out Of Mind is underpinned much more effectively by a drum beat that has immaculate timing and reach. The keyboards and electric guitar are sharply defined, while Donald Fagen’s vocals resonate sumptuously with good separation.
With Coldplay’s A Sky Full Of Stars (24/96 FLAC), Chris Martin’s vocals are the highlight in terms of revelation and impact. The attack of the piano rumble is a bit slow out of the gate and the synth is a tad too rounded. The midrange boost isn’t optimum for all sources, Wings’ Band On The Run (24/96 ALAC) for example sounds much better using the Rock pre-set, which boosts the 160Hz band and higher frequencies, tempering the midrange a tad, allowing much better balance between the vocals and instruments.
Another limitation is the volume starts to sound harsh and lose coherency as you crank it up. There is also a slight double click before the first track played from standby, but at least gapless playback is on board.
Conclusion
Overall, the performance isn’t quite as open or refi ned as you get from more expensive players and the FiiO X1 is also a bit of a pain to operate in some respects. That said, considering the price there is plenty about the unit to recommend it. You may have to work a bit to get the best out of it, but the FiiO X1 is still a significant step up from bog-standard MP3 players, iPods and smartphones.
TYPE 24-bit/192kHz capable digital audio portable
FEATURES
● APE, FLAC, ALAC, WAV, WMA, AAC, OGG, MP3, MP2 playback
● microSD XC slot (128GB max)
● 2in 320×240-pixel screen
WEIGHT 106g
DIMENSIONS (WxHxD) 57 x 96 x 14mm