Fiio X1 II: Review, Features and Price of The Latest Fiio MP3 Player

If you want to use a portable player with DAC and professional amplifier included at a competitive price, you can't miss the Fiio X1 II. Do you want to know more details? Well, let's take a look.

Fiio X1 II design

The Fiio X1 II player features a classic design that doesn't look bad at all. It's 10mm shorter and slightly wider than its big brother, the Fiio X3. It weighs a total of about 106 grams, and is about the size of a credit card. It has a metal sheet covering all the edges including the back, although the top and bottom of the device are made of plastic. On the left side, we have the on/off button and the volume up/down buttons. The bottom part includes the microSD card input, the micro-USB connector for charging the device's battery and finally the 3.5 mm mini jack connector.

The display panel is 2 inches with TFT technology. It's opaque, and can be annoying to see when there is a lot of light around, such as in outdoor environments. However, in indoor environments, such as in your office or bedroom, it can be seen without any problem. We would have liked to see a fuller color reproduction on the screen, as we are used to seeing on cell phone screens. It's worth mentioning that you can change the background colors in the general settings of the device between gold, silver, pink, orange, blue and green. The box includes a small plastic protector that is quite rigid, and allows you to protect the Fiio X1 II from any fall or scratches.

User-friendly controls

On the front, we find most of the available buttons to use. In the central part, we have the selection button with which you can access the menus. Around it, we have the wheel that serves to navigate in a similar way to the touch wheel of the iPod Classic, although sometimes it tends to be a little imprecise. On the top right, we have the back button and on the left the menu button. At the bottom, we find two buttons that allow you to change the song. Within the system we have the usual:

• Now Playing: This is the current playback, i.e. the music, folder or album that is currently playing.
• Category: To be able to filter the music in a more detailed way.
• Browse Files: Directly to go to all files.
• System settings: The general settings of the device.
• Play settings: Here we find all the playback options. Playback gap in case we want to add a small space between playbacks. Default volume, the factory volume so that all songs have the same volume. EqualiZer, a seven-band equalizer where we can choose some factory presets or modify them manually.

These are some of the many options offered by the play settings. It should be noted that this is a highly customizable device. When the display is off, the device is in Stand-by, which is indicated by a small LED located at the bottom, and doesn't allow it to turn on or cause any unexpected action by pressing any button on the front. The only buttons that allow you to perform any action when the screen is off are the volume and on/off buttons, this is important especially when you keep it in your pocket.

Fiio X1 II sound quality

The device uses a Texas Instruments DAC, specifically the PCM5242 that can reach up to 110dB with 24-bit audio, which means that they have optimized it in a very good way. The chip is of high quality, and clearly above the integrated DACs of smart phones. We should mention that the Fiio X1 II is the entry-level model of all the DAC amplifier models they offer.

Sound is heard quite well, and you can use any type of headphones with a relatively high impedance, preferably not 600 ohm headphones because it will be a little difficult, but not impossible. It also has a high quality dedicated output operational amplifier known as the Intersil ISL28291. It achieves up to 4.4 V peak-to-peak on the X1 with fairly low noise and distortion and really high efficiency. It can play virtually any type of music file: WAV, FLAC, APE, ALAC, WMA, MP3, AAC, OGG VORBIS, among others. It also integrates an included line output with which you can expand the possibilities of use by pairing it, for example, with a Fiio Q1.

Battery and storage

It has no internal storage, so you must use a micro SD card with up to 256 GB of storage, much more than the 128 GB offered by the first generation of the Fiio X1. The 1800 mAh battery is also an improvement over the original model and lasts for approximately twelve hours of use, allowing you to easily use it during a trip or over the course of the day. Charging time can take approximately three hours.

Conclusion

Overall, it's a very good player and can easily play any kind of music in high quality. Even formats such as FLAG or WAV are reproduced cleanly and without any loss of quality. It's important to mention that, not being a brand that has too many products on the market, the Fiio X1 constantly receives updates that improve the user experience , so it's worth giving this product a chance. Interested? find the best prices on Amazon.

We recommend you check out our review of the best Fiio DAPs, and our review of the excellent Shanling M0. If you want information about the best walkmans and MP3 players, remember to visit our culturasonora page. There you will find in-depth and objective reviews by specialists in the audio world.

Technical characteristics Fiio X1 II