INTRODUCTION

   Listening to music while at home, the office or even while on the road is something I’ve always enjoyed immeasurably and I’m certain that's also true for most people out there. What's also true however is that not everyone has the same standards/taste about things, for example some people want the largest LCD screens with the highest resolutions and refresh rates so they can enjoy playing their favourite game titles and/or watching movies while others may just want the highest quality speakers/headsets and/or the best music players for the maximum possible audio clarity and output (likewise some people prefer consoles over PCs and vice versa). Personally, as far back as i can remember I’ve always used portable music players (cassette/CD/Mini Disc/MP3) with the M11 Hi-Res Portable Music Player by FiiO (review here) topping that list, at least until their flagship M15 model arrived at my doorstep almost 2 months ago.

   FiiO was established in 2007 and has experience in researching and developing countless portable music products of different types, and sell FiiO-branded products through sales agents worldwide. The brand name FiiO is composed of Fi(fidelity from HiFi) and iO(number 1&0), representing the real feeling and convenient life that digital brings to life. Meanwhile, the Chinese “飞傲” is the transliteration of FiiO, indicating the positive and innovative spirit as thriving as spring. FiiO is focused on product quality, adheres strictly to ISO9001 standards in quality management and works hard to attain the lowest repair-related product returns rate.

   The M15 had to surpass the already excellent M11 (and the M11 Pro after that) in every conceivable way so to do that FiiO equipped it with not 1 but 2 AK4499EQ switched resistor DACs by Asahi Kasei (768KHz/32-bit/DSD512 native/140dB SNR) which they successfully paired with the Exynos 7872 hexa-core processor by Samsung (features two A73 cores clocked at 2GHz, four A53 cores clocked at 1.6GHz, 3GB LPDDR3 RAM and 64GB flash memory), the XUF208 USB chip by XMOS (768KHz/DSD512 - 384KHz/DSD128 for USB audio) and the CSR8675 v5.0 bluetooth chip by Qualcomm (supports the SBC/aptX/aptX-HD/LDAC/HWA audio codecs and features their Kalimba DSP). However, the list of hardware components is far from over since inside the M15 FiiO also managed to squeeze 7 TI op-amps (2xOPA2211/4xOPA1612/1xOPA1622), 8-layer gold PCB (complete with independent shielding and copper-nickel-zinc alloy heatsinks), ProASIC3 series FPGA (ARM Cortex-M1 processor), two custom Japanese NDK crystal units, dedicated audio capacitors and a somewhat huge 7490mAh lithium-cobalt oxide rechargeable battery (supports QC2.0/MTK PE fast charging) which can provide the M15 with up to 15 hours of music playback. An analog potentiometer volume knob, gold plated headphone outputs, left side controls and a 5.15 inch corning gorilla glass borderless screen (1440x720p/18:9/16.7 million colors/312PPI/10-finger multi-touch) complete this clearly impressive package.