FiiO M15 Android loseless audio player review: high-end Hi-Res player for audio enthusiasts

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FiiO M15 Audio Player: design

Users of the excellent Fiio M11 and its slight evolution M11 Pro audio player will not be lost, since the Fiio M15 is more or less the same size as its little brothers. Thus its dimensions of 134 x 75 x 18mm and its 5.15 “720p screen (18: 9 format) fortunately allow to remain in an acceptable approach, although the product is not suitable for small hands.

FiiO M15 player is made of aluminum-magnesium alloy CNC, with concave design on both sides of the body, 18:9 display on the front, Corning gorilla lenses as screen glass, carbon fiber texture on the back cover, five physical keys on the side, two-way Type-C interface and hidden TF cassette at the bottom.

In addition, these physical buttons are housed in a slight recess, so that they cannot be operated accidentally. Clearly the brand is refining and professionalizing its approach to industrial design.

FiiO M15 Audio Player: sound quality

The main course remains clearly its technical part, and on this side the mark sends heavy. Connected model and under Android, the Fiio M15 is based on an Exynos 7872 SOC similar to what already existed on the Fiio M11, a chip already powerful enough for this use. But most of all, the great strong point comes from its digital-to-analog converters, with the presence of a Dual Dac AKM4499EQ, simply the most high-end chip from the manufacturer Asahi Kasei and perhaps the most modern on the market. It”s simple, at the moment only the very high-end Astell & Kern SP2000 (nearly 4000 Euros) has such chips in the top end.

The sound of the Fiio M15 is very stretchy and relaxed, and opening is a standard that distinguishes whether a player device is high-end or not. The sound of the extremely easy-to-drive FH1s is not directly pushed by the M15, while headset users only need to adjust the large headset mode and gain mode to get a good sound experience. M15’s strong control and sound quality make it possible for others to control the mainstream HiFi headset products on the market. This is also a reflection of the three-in-one concept of M15 at the press conference.

In addition, the sound of the M15 under the single end is very pure, there is no obvious bias in style, and the background noise is very clean. The exhilarating effect of music can be felt in some songs with large dynamics and great changes in sound pressure.

In addition, the FiiO M15 player has four working music modes: Android mode, pure tone mode, USB decoder mode and Bluetooth receiving mode. It also supports in-car mode when traveling.

FiiO M15 Audio Player: connectivity

Of course the Fiio M15 works completely balanced, from its converters to its jack outputs. Thus the model takes up the clever layout already seen in the M11 and M11 Pro by offering: a 3.5mm plug (unbalanced), a 2.5mm plug and a 4.4mm plug. The output power is not extremely detailed for the moment, but we know that the brand announces :

● Up to 490 mW under 32 Ohms in 3.5mm jack

● Up to 800 mW at 32 ohms balanced output

The Fiio M15 uses the usual gain adjustment, high or low depending on the headphones or earphones connected.

The brand is not very talkative about the characteristics of its amplifying part, but it does specify that no less than 10 OP amplifiers are used in the end, which suggests a total separation of balanced and unbalanced amplifications, as well as the use of some of these models for operations other than pure amplification (correction, filtering, etc). The characteristics are impressive in any case, with an announced frequency response at 20 Hz – 90 kHz (+-3dB), an SNR exceeding 122 dB, and a background noise not exceeding 2.1uV at the unbalanced output. Finally, the harmonic distortion rate (THD+N) is measured at less than 0.001%.

The use of high-end NDK oscillators allows it to support DSD512 natively, as well as 32-bit/768kHz PCM. Finally, the player can decode the AQA format in hardware.

For the more connected (though clearly not its primary use), the Fiio M15 uses Qualcomm’s CSR8675 latest-generation Bluetooth chip.

FiiO M15 Audio Player: battery life

Finally, note that the FiiO M15 Audio Player announces an autonomy of 15 hours and 1800 hours of standby time via its 7490 mAh battery. It supports fast charging technology for QC2.0 and MTK PE. The recharging and USB DAC connection is done via its USB-C socket, which supports 18W fast recharging.

FiiO M15 Audio Player: price and availability

The Fiio M15 Audio Player is openly high-end, which brings its price to a 8998 yuan (about $1300) clearly above what the brand usually charges. The Fiio M15 Audio Player has been available for pre-sale in China on December 28.