Let me start by saying that most of my digital audio library consists of 24bit/96kHz albums made from vinyl rips which I have cleaned up. My main reason for acquiring this digital audio player (DAP) was to retire my aging iPod Classic which has no support for FLAC and no provisions for increasing the storage capacity...which meant I was always having to resample and dither my 24bit/96kHz audio files to 16bit/44kHz for use with it. In other words, it’s a bit of a PITA!
My journey did not start with the FiiO M7 though. I originally purchased a Sony NW-A45 but returned it because I didn’t really like the sound quality I was getting, and I was having considerable cover art issues with the unit (yes, I converted any progressive images to baseline – didn’t help). So I spent an extra $50 and bought the Fiio M7. To be fair, the first one I received did not power up and/or had graphics/screen issues. I purchased a second unit, and it has worked as expected.
About the only thing I liked better with the Sony was the rounded corners and comfort of handling. The FiiO is a chiseled block of serious substance. It has a weight and heft to it that reminds you no cheap plastic has been used to create this thing. Its corners are not sculpted and may not be comfortable in your hand.
Sound:
Comparing the two players, I found the Sony to have a more bland sound. Do not take this to mean the FiiO isn’t neutral. I find the FiiO to be perhaps a bit more powerful with more texture and organic nature to the sound. The Sony, to my ears, has a somewhat sterile quality to it.
I own a number of headphones: AKG K271 MkII, AKG 701, Audio-Technica ATH-M50, Grado SR80 and Sennheiser HD600 which I tried with this DAP. The low impedance of the Grado SR80 and Audio-Technica ATH-M50 means you’ll be using the volume of the unit only at around the 50% mark or less (30 of 60). However, I love the sound of my Sennheiser HD600 cans more than any of my other headphones I own. I was surprised to find that I can get a nice sound from this unit without an external amp using the HD600. Granted, I am at about 75% volume for most recordings…but I am simply thrilled that this combination has worked for me.
Functionality:
I bought the M7 to play music, so sound quality is very important. But what good is sound quality if you can’t figure out how to operate it? Unfortunately, I am THAT guy who is always critiquing the technology I buy with questions like:
“What were they thinking?” and “Whoever designed this thing should be fired – IMMEDIATELY!”
Well, I am happy to report that neither of these phrases blurted from my mouth with the M7. To me, the GUI on this unit is the bomb. The engineering team at FiiO did a superb job creating all the menus and screens for this player. The layout is very logical and operating it is so intuitive that you don’t even need a user manual – which is a good thing…because at the time of this writing, FiiO has yet to provide anything other than a Quick Start guide for this unit.
To summarize my findings:
Likes:
* Sound quality is excellent with several sets of headphones used
* The GUI is SUPERB on this unit
* LOVE the click wheel used to control the volume
* The construction is solid and feels like a high-quality player
* Very stable operating system – not a single crash yet and I have about 130GB on a 256GB SDXC card inside it right now
* Battery life is outstanding
* Cover art is correctly found and displayed for ALL albums I have on the storage card
* The cable for charging/data transfer is of decent length – I don’t need to have the DAP right next to me when transferring music to the unit from my laptop
* As trivial as this sounds, I like the fact that FiiO thought enough to put a clock at the top center of the display screen (shame on you Sony!)
Dislikes:
* Would have preferred a unit with rounded corners for more comfort when holding
* It would be nice if those three little buttons (next track, play/pause, previous track) on the left side of the unit were on the top instead, it would make it easier to hold the unit
* Please FiiO, don’t send a product to market until you have time to complete a full user manual – some people want/need that.
This has been one of my favorite purchases of the year. Since acquiring the M7, I can now sell my iPod and make my music listening experience even more pleasurable. Now I anxiously await the arrival of affordable 512GB Micro SDXC cards to hit the consumer market so I can store even more music on this player!
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Product Description
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Samsung’s Exynos 7270 SoCThe M7 is FiiO’s first player to use Samsung’s Exynos 7270 SoC (system on chip), which is able to get greater power efficiency and better battery life. |
ESS Sabre 9018 chipWithin the core of the M7 lies the Sabre 9018Q2C chip by ESS, an SoC that neatly combines a high-performance DAC and headphone amplifier into one tiny package. |
6-layer multi-stage HDIThe M7 is the first digital audio player to contain a 6-layer multi-stage HDI (high density interconnect) PCB, the same kind that is used in the latest smartphones. |
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High fidelity wirelessThe M7 utilizes a Samsung Bluetooth 4.2 chip that supports the aptX-HD audio codec and LDAC wireless audio code which gives you truly high-resolution audio experience. |
USB audio outThe USB audio digital output functionality on the M7 supports various sampling rates and DSD output (including DSD128 support). |
FM radioWithin the M7 lies a whole another world of FM radio! Unlike many other comparable players, the M7 contains a dedicated FM chip, the Si4705. *Please insert your headphones into the M7 to enable FM functionality. |
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40 days of standby timeLying within the M7 is an 1180mAh battery that, thanks to the Exynos 7270’s advance 14nm fabrication process, allows the device to have a play time of 20 hours or more, or a standby time up to a whopping 40 days! |
Full touch screen operationThe M7 employs a 3.2-inch 480 x 800 display with image zooming support and an innovative gesture system to get around different menus. |
More storageThe M7 has 2GB of built-in storage and supports up to a single 512GB micro SD card for storage expansion. |
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No sweat with decodingThe M7 supports up to 192kHz/24 bit PCM audio. As for audio file formats, among the supported areAPE/WAV/FLAC/AIF/DSD/M4A/WMA/OGG/AAC/ALAC/MP3 as well as CUE codec and numerous others. |
Getting modern with USB Type-CThe M7 employs a USB Type-C connector for connectivity, enabling for both more convenience and for more functionality. |
Explosive colorsWith four vibrant colors to choose from – black, silver, red, and blue – make yourself known and jazz out with the M7! |
Reviews with images
Good casing quality and output, H'phone jack again DOA, bad SD card issues. Waste of time!
I am an Audiophile - vacuum tubes (cdp, pre and Carver KT150 amps) along with H2O Stereo amps from Henry Ho, driving Apogee Ribbons. This review is about the build/OS/UI issues and not the sound quality which the issues have given me little chance to evaluate. THAT will be reviewed under edit after the following have been dealt with successfully, when I shall fully update my total experience with this FiiO M7 player.:Bought this unit for a Europe trip, for pairing with my Oontz travel speaker and TWS earbuds. Chosen because of the capacity (via card) and the file flexibility through various lossless options. Screen size was a plus as well. Writing this temporary review that I will update after our when hopefully I have received a reply from FiiO Customer Support about the issues unexpectedly encountered with a) update files (keep unzipping and becoming useless to update and perhaps cure some of the b) slowness and quirks of the OS, and c) to discuss exchange acct d) headphone jack failure.1) Downloaded zip file (which FiiO insists not be unzipped before executing/activating) keeps opening upon download and becoming numerous files that do not seem to do the job. ....this may be a tech geek failure on my part, and plays no role in the current 3 Star rating ;-)2) The UI and OS are rather slow and buggy IMHO. Album art is very slow to load whenever I turn the M7 on to play music from the inserted 512 GB card (holding about 162 GB lossless WMA files. If you are paired and playing, the music and BT are interrupted if you scroll up or down through your music - often it seems, acct the art loading as you go IMHO. The screen touches are unreliable and often require a double tap (which then sometimes puts you 2 layers away). Getting the FiiO Music to display both internal 2 GB storage and card contents not intuitive and sometimes doesn't show. BT initial pairing is slow acct the comms internally between the BT screen and the Play screen. Always seems to work, just not easily ... think these characteristics may be a result of the Headphone jack which arrived damaged and 'shorting'frequently (see below).3) Hoping that when I hear back from FiiO CSR that we can arrange a rapid exchange barring a software solution that also fixes the hardware issues.4) The headphone jack is corrupted or shorted. Numerous buds all do not play right channel. Also crackle of static in all phones especially on the rare moments that the right channel decides to transmit. Unfortunately, this causes the OS to pause or stop the playback every time, and seems to be the indication of a short or static-discharge problem.UPDATE #1 : 1) After returning from trip found that Fiio Support had responded over a week later and requested I send the unit to them for evaluation. I had already decided that this unit was going back to Amazon as I felt there were some internal issue with it that were too intrinsic to accept, and I wanted one that worked as advertised asap.2) For the price, I had decided though that this is a good product for the price, and the UI quirks OK at that price point.3)Therefore I am raising my review to 4 stars. The 5th star not awarded is for the slow response and damage encountered with this unit.4) I have returned it to Amazon and received my refund, and am purchasing another of these units in a final attempt to get the DAP I hoped to in the first place.5) If the new player arrives undamaged and working as designed, it will get a 5 Star review ... and a detailed description of the sound qualities and characteristics experienced..UPDATE #2 AS PROMISED: (Christmas Day) .... Again have spent almost 2 more days trying to get the second black replacement unit to work as I so desperately hoped but finally giving up and returning and moving on. On-board 2GB memory loaded easily but in addition to failed jack, SD card loading much less successful and more time consuming - with many different cards - just as with the first red unit here.Simply put ..... Retail should be ready for prime time ;-)1) the headphone jack was once again very crackly and unstable, delivering only one channel or none until I jiggled the plug, and the headphone icon would appear only intermittently - which is exactly what occurred with the first, red, Fiio m7. Software would also react to this and pause or stop playing, and this might have contributed to the recurring corrupt reading of files and slow screen responses.(This new one is black, and whereas the redone was already clad in the silicone sleeve upon opening the box, this one was enclosed separately from the protective case FWIW)2) Both M7s had difficulties with large capacity cards and changed the files from the presentation and tagging on my Dell Desktop. I have enclosed photos of the numerous cards I attempted to use, reformatting and retrying numerous times. The download speeds were slow, and the process excruciatingly long and buggy and IMHO unsuccessful.3) Moving to ever better-quality but smaller capacity SD cards did not correct the DAPs errors and results. Perhaps this is a tagging issue, but these are the only devices that I have encountered this with. I made great efforts to scrub tags etc. On-board memory seemed fine and ran well.4) As you can also see from the pictures, I am familiar with and own some exotic high-end kit. None of that kit, as esoteric as it is, has ever needed me to act the engineer and tech doctor to operate beyond changing the odd aging valve (vacuum tube). I hav eKT-120 tube amps by Bob Carver that have performed flawlessly and sublimely for years and H20 high-powered digital amps by Henry Ho that have also performed at the highest level for years as have my Acute Mk3 tube CDP and Modwright tube preamplifiers. NONE of that kit has consumed as much time upon initial purchase, or since, as these 2 M7 DAPs have.5) AS A RESULT I shall be returning this unit to Amazon, and not contacting FiiO as I no longer wish to devote any more of my time to this product especially in light of the recurrent shoddy headphone jack manufacture, which renders the radio inoperative, and the best headphone sound impossible to hear.FINALLY, I am most eager to communicate not only how disappointed I am in this promising product, but how eager I also was to make it work for me. I fell that I agree with Neil Young's customers and investors, that this technology is neither ready nor a good idea for a user like me who expects hardware and software to be presented in a finished and useable state when retailed.IF YOU are willing to be an unpaid engineer this might be a good deal for you, but for me, it has been an unprofitable retail purchase and waste of my valuable time before and during a trip abroad, and during my Christmas with family. This was our first vacation in 11 years acct parental care issues, and it was not enhanced by these FiiO-product experiences. Unfortunately, in researching how to overcome these issues, they are well-documented in feedback and online posts over the years, and the headphone jack issue alone is 20% of the negative Amazon reviews, with this review 2 of the 10 reviews, and in the main seem to only have been surmounted by the most tech-skilled amongst us. Even more unfortunately, I am in the vast majority who are not so inclined when buying retail.As a result of my bad experiences, subsequent research and conclusions, I feel these issues should have been resolved before new models were introduced and retailed, and so have made this a ONE STAR REVIEW.
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hoy diciembre 2023 me sigue funcionando exelente producto los pixeles no los tenia muertos se recuperaron despues.
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