Amateur Hour
Hey Head-Fi! I picked up the FiiO FH5 on a whim while wanting to get some better IEMs to take advantage of my Q5S. I compared these IEMs to the Tin P1, BLON BL-03, and Shure SE-215. The primary things I look for in IEMs are isolation, soundstage, good bass extension, and vocal clarity. I primarily use IEMs while listening to music with vocals and I used these against: Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey, RADWIMPS, Neko Hacker, Novelbright, TOTALFAT, flumpool, and many other JPop artists. I can link to my Japanese playlist if anyone is interested in hearing a range of JPop/JRock/JPunk. I primarily powered these IEMs from a FiiO Q5S, FiiO M11, and an iPhone headphone adapter.

TL;DR
At this price point they are fantastic for what they offer -- Bottom Line: if you're looking to spend $250~ for IEMs I would highly suggest trying these! Sound, fit, easy to power!. I think the biggest "yes" for these IEMs is the shell. I wanted something that was shaped to the ear versus my other IEMs which are designed to rest on the concha and sealed with the antihelix. Of course, these aren't true to ear, custom molded so mileage will vary, but I find them to have a very *comfortable* fit whereas something like the Shure SE-215 will fatigue my ears. The IEMs are easily powered from the free, included lightning adapter on the iPhone and greatly improve in sound richness and resolving ability when powered by a clean source like the M11 or Q5S. The IEMs use a hybrid 3 BA | 1 DD. The BA are specifically used for mid, high, and ultra high frequencies while the DD provides awesome bass extension and definitely brings flavor to my music library. These are great in-ears and Amazon makes it very easy to at least demo them for a few days.

The Build
I love this shell! It's made with a 5-axis CNC machined aluminum-magnesium alloy and sits great in the ear. At first, I had an issue where the IEM didn't stay in my ear but I swapped for the foams and was able to get the fit that I was looking for. Foams definitely helped in the fit. The included cable is fantastic and I have no desire to change it. I always look to buy products that have replaceable cables as I do not trust myself to solder away on expensive products if they experience cable failure so the inclusion of an MMCX connector is appreciated. I would say the nozzle length is on part with what I've seen -- similar to the Tin T2 or BLON. The included tip selection is decent so feel free to rotate through them and find ones that work best with your ears.

The Sound

Overall
These sound incredible -- period. Not relative to the price but just in general. I will say, I am less of an analytical listener and more of a pleasure listener. I prefer songs that are happier, upbeat, and decently fast. Even so, I took my time with these IEMs and pushed up my volume pot to see what these were capable. Soundstage is decent enough, much wider than the SE215 but nothing like an open back. Imaging was decent with good instrument separation. My belief is that imaging and soundstage and greatly correlated which makes sense because with more "headspace" you can separate better. Baseline: You want good IEMs? Definitely try these.

Bass
The bass on these is pretty dang good. To be honest, I have a decent size collection of IEMs and headphones but always tend to buy more neutral products. My BLONs really elevated my listening experience because of that slightly emphasized bass. In fact, what really drew me to the FiiO FH5 in the first place was the dynamic driver which promised good bass extension. I find that the bass on the majority of the songs I listened to was present and definitely gave some coloring to the music but it wasn't overpowering and maintained impressive vocal clarity. I find that with the higher priced IEMs, you want to really get a nice clear & present bass rather than something that is tuned to just be a subwoofer. The FH5 do great in this regard and make me hesitant to try BA only headphones because of the wonderful lows that the dynamic driver provides.

Mids
The vocal clairty on these FH5s is nothing to laugh at. I can really appreciate vocal-heavy tracks and hear clear and distinct placement that they did. For example, in some bollywood songs, back vocals are coming from the left and right while the lead vocals are coming out of the center and all this detail is preserved and presented perfectly from the FH5s.

Treble
My biggest issue with some IEMs is sibilance that some exude in the highs. When I realized I was treble sensitive my first step was EQing and finding good IEMs that presented relatively neutral sound. I am happy to report that the FH5 produces high and ultra-high frequencies that are pleasant and enjoyable to listen to. FiiO claims that their inclusion of an S. TURBO acoustic structural design filters the mids and highs produced by the dynamic so you can get the full power of the Knowles 31082.

Isolation
Finally, the isolation. I use IEMs in a noisy work environment, in fact, I am almost using audio equipment to drown out the sound around me when I need to focus. I'll put the FiiO FH5 at a 8/10 for isolation. They are not the Shure SE-215 which I need to say are like putting in hearing protection -- they do not let outside sound in at all! But, they aren't open and with good foams will definitely block out sound. I love isolation because it lets me keep volumes low to prevent hearing damage and to really focus in on what I am doing. There are double flange eartips included in the box which at the time of this review I have not yet tried but I may in the future and update this review. Overall, the FH5s are fine for the price.

Amateur Hour
Hey Head-Fi. I am just a regular guy that got into the audio hobby after developing the need to have some kind of noise playing during the day (I try to use white noise/rain sounds but will overlay Lofi off of Youtube). But when I do listen to music, and I will admit I'll really listen to anything, I enjoy the Hi-Fi experience. This review is based off using the Fiio M11 for approximately 40~ hours on Fiio FH5, Tin P1, and Shure SE 215. I played a mixture of Spotify HQ, Youtube Music, FLAC, MP3 320 Kbps, and MP3 192 Kbps. I compared this source to my Pioneer XDP 30R and FiiO Q5S connected to an iPhone 11 Pro.

TL;DR/Summary
I feel that this player does an amazing job at being a source. If your primary goal is to just use the device for music playback, especially locally off of the two SD card slots (tons of expandable storage!), the added features such as a USB DAC, Bluetooth Audio receiver, and range of streaming apps makes this a fantastic player. However, I cannot feel that alternatives can be had for a similar price that provide a better quality of life experience. My only reason for really docking this player is the software and hardware limitations that FiiO implicitly put on themselves for choosing to run Android on it.

However, if you want to get a more feature-filled experience, I highly recommend buying the FiiO Q5S and tethering it to your phone or buying a cheap Android phone in the $200-$300 range. This in total will be slightly more than the FiiO M11 but if you want to have a lag-free, feature rich Android DAP experience, it will be 100x better than what the M11 provides. If you are considering this player because of Android: run away. If you are considering this player for an amazing audio experience without the need for a super fluid UI and the occasional hiccup: this is the player I would choose. I am sadly going to be returning my M11 but hope to return to the DAP scene if FiiO decides to just take a Samsung Galaxy S8 and shove audio into it.

Hardware
Find some pictures of my player below. FiiO's marketing materials on this device are better than anything my iPhone can take so check those out for sure. I will say that my player came with the protective case pre-installed and have not removed it for anything other than inserting my own SD-Card. The device is rather bulky with the case on, about the size of two iPhone's stacked on top of each other. But that edge pushing display and glass body with aluminum trim are undeniably beautiful. Compared to my XDP 30R, this is a premium feeling device and looks great. The 4.4 Pentaconn balanced, 2.5mm balanced, and 3.5mm input are awesome for output capabilities. The device uses USB C for charging and USB DAC. The player supports Bluetooth 4.2 (not the standard 5.0) but has support for LDAC/aptX.

Software
I am a software engineer by profession and I can tell what FiiO did to cut corners on this player. The DAC/AMP chipset is definitely wonderful and will push IEMs to levels that are beyond just enjoyable, however, the real issue is the operating system and the SoC (Exynos 7872) that FiiO put into this device.

Android's optimizations are somewhat poor out of the box, and this box is of course the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). The AOSP allows companies to build and run "Android" on their devices but lacks the license agreement needed to install Google Play Services and GMS, two components which will unlock the Android that most people know of. Additionally, the optimizations needed to get this player to play with a slightly modified stock version of Android 7.0 just do not seem to be present. As a result, you are missing out on the Google Play store and are forced to sideload applications from APKPure and FiiO's built in "app store". This is not a fault of FiiO so much as there not really being a need for securing a licensing deal for this player since it is first and foremost a portable DAP and the added benefits of Android are secondary. However, if you are planning on buying this player, I imagine you are somewhat interested in knowing how much of that "Android" can you take advantage of. The lack of Google Play Services means that you will have to also use a "piracy" version of YouTube since YouTube depends on Google specific services.

This, coupled with a lackluster 3 GB of RAM, mean that you are getting a severely laggy device. I'm making an assumption here but arguendo, if you're looking at buying this player you most likely have had some experience with a modern Android phone. And by modern, I do not mean a flagship like a OnePlus 7T or Samsung Note 10+. I mean even the cheap Pocofone, Huawei P30 Lite, Moto Z Play, etc. These phones even with their limitations have amazing performance compared to the FiiO. It's not just a laggy UI that is caused by a lack of RAM, processing power, and optimizations, it's the hang ups. I will be using the player and encounter just random freezing or crashing apps. When trying to skip through a large track (3 hours) I encounter a hang, something that never happened on my Pioneer XDP 30R, a relatively weaker portable. This portable has a subpar UX compared to a "dumb" player that runs a custom operating system.

The worst part is that the FiiO M11 Pro and M15 use the same SoC, and while I have not had the chance to use either, I can imagine the same problems that plague this device in usability will be present on those and feel even more exaggerated for the price. The Exynos 7872 is well known for its use in the budget phone, Meizu M6S. That phone came out in 2018. This device, a device that lacks the cellular radio, telephony components, camera, etc, performs seemingly worse!

To sum it up, this device performs poorly compared to what is possible for Android phones in this price bracket. The fact that FiiO put Android on the device makes me expect at least budget phone performance and this is just laughably bad, especially at the price of some *flagship* products.

Music!
Well that is what the player is for! I had a blast using this player with my IEMs. I took it around for a bit just to see what the experience would be like compared to a phone and Q5S combo and the experience is comparable. I tried a ton of tracks from Tycho, Owl City, Taylor Swift, Iann Dior, Tobu, Juice WRLD, Lofi Remixes, and JPop. All in all, the player handled everything in my library well and only struggled on playback of large mixes that I had compiled -- the player would hang when trying to skip to certain parts of the mix. The FiiO Music app is actually pretty gorgeous for what it is and has tons of customizability with an EQ, Gapless playback, Theming, FiiO link, etc. It is very similar to the FiiO app on the phone. Spotify works flawlessly on the music side but is hindered by the software stutters and lag. YouTube, something that I actually use quite a bit because of the convenience, does not work natively. There is a piracy enabled version of YouTube that *does* work with the player but that does not allow for YouTube sign on -- a feature I miss because of my playlists and the fact that I pay for YouTube premium.

The player supports high-res music files and handled my FLACs of Coldplay no problem. I will say that I found the EQ rather interesting in that it seems to lower the volume as compared to it just being off but it allows for quite a range of customizability and will satisfy most people.

There are music filters! I found no real difference with them on my IEMs but there is the option for those that appreciate tuning the playback. High/low gain present and works flawlessly.

Comfort-review-wise: I loved listening to music on this device. When I got my playlists loaded in and threw in my IEMs for a couple hours of work or reading, I got lost. I really enjoyed using this player when it was just playing music. But the software really hinders it in UX and thus got me thinking that the Q5S+Phone was really enough.

Misc
This might sound strange but I saw that I was able to install Kindle on the player. The player is amazing for music playback but in a strange way was perfect for reading. Since it is so hindered in being used as a regular Android device, I was able to comfortably read and listen to music without feeling the FOMO of a regular phone with notifications pinging every minute. While this is not what the player is meant to be used for, those that want to extract additional functionality out of it for running Android should do some research into the apps that you want to use to see if they require Google Play Services.