INTRODUCTION

   Although to many people the arrival of the very first smartphones just over a decade ago signified the end of portable music players in my book no smartphone can beat a dedicated high-end music player that can easily surpass the audio performance of even the highest end models. Fortunately although most of the establish manufacturers have left this particular segment of the electronics industry (SONY is among the very few who still haven't and has a good lineup currently in the market) several new ones have emerged in the recent years and so if you're in the market for a high-end music player things couldn't get much better than they are today. FiiO is one such manufacturer and since their audio devices have gathered a huge number of awards both from print and online media today we decided to take a look at their recently released and budget friendly M3K Portable High Resolution Music Player.

   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 designs, produces and sells high-quality products at favorable prices to those who love music and style; our high-resolution digital audio players, portable headphone amplifiers, DACs and earphones have all received praise from the majority of users. Several products from FiiO have created record sales in their respective product segments and have received countless awards including iF Design Award, Reddot Award, EISA Award, VGP Award, etc. FiiO places great importance on users' needs and ceaselessly pursues perfection in product design and manufacturing, to supply users with the best audio products at the best prices. 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 M3K Portable High Resolution Music Player by FiiO (currently available in silver and black) features the low-power X1000E dedicated IoT Processor by Ingenic (MIPS-Based XBurst cores clocked at 1GHz with 64MB LPDDR) which also allows it to be used as a USB DAC (digital output and converter to analog by external circuit) with support for audio sample rates of up to 192kbps/24 bits (SNR: 95dB A-Weighted, THD: -80dB @FS-1dB) and the AK4376A advanced DAC (32-bit with integrated headphone amplifier - 25mW @ 32 Ohm / 42mw @ 16 Ohm) by ASAHI KASEI MICRODEVICES which supports a maximum sampling frequency/resolution of 384 kHz/32-bit (PCM input) with an SNR of 125dB and -107dB distortion (THD+N). The M3K also supports a wide range of audio formats (MP3/WMA/WAV/FLAC/OGG/APE/AIFF/M4A/ALAC/ISO/DFF/DSF) and features an aluminum body with a tempered glass top cover, 2-inch 240x320p IPS screen, five sets of capacitive touch buttons, high fidelity microphone, micro SD card slot with support for cards up to 2TB in capacity (that is when they get released) and an 1100mAh lithium-ion internal rechargeable battery pack thanks to which it can go non-stop for a total of 24 hours (has a standby time of up to 38 days).

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

PACKAGING AND CONTENTS

FiiO ships the M3K inside a white box that has a product picture at the front along with their logo and the Hi-Res logo.

Product information is printed at the rear right beneath a genuine product sticker.

The player is wrapped inside a plastic bag and placed inside a soft piece of foam.

Along with the player you will also receive the micro USB charging/file transfer/DAC cable, warranty information paper, open source license paper (for the custom Linux OS used with the M3K) and the user manual.

THE M3K

The M3K is a compact music player (weighs just 77.5g) so its aluminum body measures just 90.8mm in length, 44.2mm in width and 12mm in height.

Right out of the box the M3K is placed inside a removable black silicon cover.

To have a better understanding about its size i placed my iPhone 6 64GB right next to it (smallest smartphone we have here).

The 2-inch IPS screen may not be as large as we'd like but it's still enough for the required functions.

All of the capacitive touch buttons are located right beneath the IPS screen.

Of course you can only clearly see them when the device is powered up (the long center button works like a touch pad/screen).

On the left side of the housing we find the power on/off button, volume up/down button and the play/pause button.

Moving at the base of the M3K we see the 3.5mm port, micro SD card slot and the micro USB charging port.

Several certification logos (including the Hi-Res one) are located at the rear of the aluminum housing.

To sufficiently test the M3K by FiiO we used the three top wired headphone sets that we have here in the lab (1MORE Triple Driver Over-Ear, Thinksound On1 Monitor Series and the AIAIAI TMA-1 Fools Gold).

USING THE M3K

The M3K uses a custom Linux OS and as you can see from the above pictures roughly 80% of the 2-inch IPS screen is used for album art (when present of course - may take a couple of seconds to load). The screen may not be very detailed and doesn't feature the same angles most of us are used to with our smartphones but for a budget-friendly music player that was expected.

You can also use the capacitive buttons to browse available files/directories, browse categories, use the high-fidelity microphone to record what you hear, adjust play settings (you can even set the maximum volume level which is quite useful for kids if you are worried they may damage their ears), adjust the system settings (screen brightness and USB mode - DAC or storage - can be adjusted from here) and finally you can also choose one of the two available themes.

If you want more colorful graphics you should choose theme number two as seen above.

FiiO has also equipped the M3K with a 5-band equalizer with 6 available presets (rock/classical/jazz/pop/dance/metal/vocal).

You can check for available firmware updates online and you can also download the USB DAC driver for Windows if you’d like to use it as a sound card.

The driver only allows you to change buffer size so it’s nowhere near to what we usually get from onboard and add-on sound cards.

CONCLUSION

   As far back as i can remember i really enjoyed listening to music while both away and at home so i always had the best music players I could afford. Just like most people growing up in the 80's and 90's i started by changing several cassette players up until the moment i replaced them with two portable CD players (one was a waterproof Philips model which I still have stashed someplace) which in turn got replaced by a minidisk player (SONY MZ-R501 model - still alive and kicking) which in time got also replaced by several low/mid-end MP3/MP4 players. Still although I’ve had my share of mid/high-end smartphones over the years I’ve never owned a high-end music player and so the M3K by FiiO is actually the very first of its kind to land in my hands. Now i have to admit that at first we were all somewhat skeptical because honestly we were expecting FiiO to send one of their highest-end models over to make sure we'd be impressed but after spending 2 weeks with the M3K i admit that it surpassed not only our expectations but also most of the smartphones we had here at the time of the review (for this review we used the Apple iPhone 6, Samsung Galaxy S7/S8 and Huawei P9/P9 Lite with the Galaxy S8 sounding perhaps – I think that’s subjective - slightly better than the M3K) in terms of audio performance. Now as I already mentioned we can't compare the M3K to another dedicated music player since to date it's the only one to find its way here but at least when compared to our smartphones the difference was for the most part quite obvious (of course if all goes well this will just be the first of many reviews to come). On top of that let’s not forget that you can also use the M3K as a USB DAC (soundcard) and although it lacks the plethora of settings we usually find with soundcard software again i was impressed with its audio performance (although we used our three headphones for all tests and not speakers). As for battery life we couldn’t hit 24 hours with the volume almost maxed out but we did hit 21 and even that is a great number for a very compact music player. Unfortunately we would had liked to see Bluetooth connectivity along with several other features like bass boost, gain control and why not even a larger display but at this price range we know we’d be asking for much.

   We’ve pointed out several times in this review that the FiiO M3K is an affordable Portable High Resolution Music Player but just how much does it cost? Well currently you can find the M3K for just USD69.99 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and for 64Euros inside the EU (Amazon.co.uk) and honestly we didn’t expect its price tag to be that low. Bottom line the M3K Portable High Resolution Music Player by FiiO may be far from their top of the line model but it should make most people (including audiophiles) very happy with its audio performance and build quality and that’s is why it gets our Golden Award.

PROS

- Build Quality (Aluminum Housing / Tempered Glass Cover)
- Audio Performance
- 2 Inch IPS Screen
- USB DAC Function
- Supported Audio Formats (MP3/WMA/WAV/FLAC/OGG/APE/AIFF/M4A/ALAC/ISO/DFF/DSF)
- 1100mAh Rechargeable Battery (Up To 24 Hours Of Playback)
- Capacitive Touch Buttons
- Supports Micro SD Cards Up To 2TB In Capacity
- Available Colors (Silver / Black)
- Price (For Some)

CONS

- Available Features (Compared To Higher End Models)