I got my hands on this as a part of the UK X5iii review tour.
 
1. Almost at once there was a keen ‘Oh ****, I’m just going to have to buy one of these’ moment for me when listening to Joni Mitchell and getting a sense for the first time ever of being able to judge or perceive the actual sound absorbency or acoustic qualities of the particular and different environments in which she recorded each of her individual vocal tracks. Just crazy.
 
2. The very, very slightly smooth tone of the X5iii made me switch from almost always using HD650’s (with my X5ii) to almost always using HD600’s. It seemed like: Smooth + Smooth = Slightly Too Damn Smooth. It was great with HD600’s though.
 
3. The wheel is fantastically useful on the go but it feels slightly odd at first: like you’re torturing a tiny sea creature with your thumb or something - and that’s just a little bit yucky.
 
4. There were a few glitches, crashes & other semi-weird interface miss-fire moments with it. Enough to make you appreciate the 'dumb' interface of non-Android DAP’s a bit more. (It seemed not to like you switching between using the Line out and headphone out mid-track and froze or crashed a couple of times.) The X5iii does make you realise that it takes very little in terms of interface glitches to make your belief in the overall coherence or the functional integrity of a device wobble a bit. It produces wonderful audio – but the impression of the player as a whole becomes peppered with the repetition of the still fairly numerous little ‘uh?’ moments. Probably the updates will fix this stuff though.
 
5. I ended up getting a bit more distracted from listening with the X5iii due to the access it offers to the endless blur of t'internet and/or Android system tweaks pulling my focus away from the music. Non-Android DAPS are pretty dull - and that’s arguably a good thing.
 
6. I worry about dropping my X5ii and I worried about dropping this more.
 
7. It’s obviously great for use with downloaded audio and since that’s basically how I get stuff now that’s obviously a huge plus over shifting stuff to SD cards from other download devices.
 
If FiiO offered to sell me the UK review tour X5iii ‘second hand’ at a hundred quid or so off the new price I’d probably buy it in a flash and flog my X5ii. Would I flog my X5ii now and buy one of these new? No - but then I buy almost nothing new and certainly not fancy DAPs. 
 
After a period of intense listening to both of them it’s made me realise afresh how much I actually really like the X5ii (particularly with my old beat-up HD650’s) and what an amazing audio device it is.
 

 

I've only used Sansa devices prior to getting this player a few weeks ago - Fuzes and Clip+'s - and I wondered if the Fiio X3 2nd Gen would provide any perceptible audio improvement. Within a minute or two of swapping the SD card over the answer became obvious: yes, there's an improvement and it's actually a pretty big one. I'm no word-smith audiophile and it's pretty much all been said but I can say this: transparency, detail, separation, sound-stage, blackness of background - they are all simply better with the X3 2nd Gen than with the Sansas. I've kept a Clip+ for ultimate portability (for jogging  with, basically) but I've sold the Fuzes as the X3 2nd Gen made them instantly redundant. I was very fond of my Fuzes and I would never have guessed that the audio upgrade would have been so noticeable or so devastating with regard to my affection for the little Sandisk devices.
 
In terms of the usability: it's great. My player came loaded with the newest 1.44Beta firmware and it makes using the wheel simply an efficient and straightforward way to navigate files and volume with no niggles or glitches at all. It may not have been so in the past and I can see that a scroll wheel with such noticeable clicks that wasn't synchronised with items on a list would be a recipe for instant crazy irritation - but with this firmware though, as far as I can see, the matter is just closed. It's fixed, it works and for me at least, it's a non-issue.
 
Actually getting my hands on the X3 2nd Gen made me realise how misleading reading lots of reviews prior to actually using a device can be. It's possible to pick up on several points that individual reviewers have found to be sticking points and accumulate them all into a ball of confusion about the player. So I had a pile of preconceptions and worries about the X3 2nd Gen that turned out to uniformly baseless: I'd need to upgrade the firmware with it straight away (no); the wheel was glitchy in use (absolutely not); the wheel cannot be used to adjust volume (it totally can); you can only skip tracks with the side buttons when the player is locked (nope, you can use them to adjust volume too: long press versus short press); the screen is unreadable outdoors (no, it's fine - and my eyesight is pretty poor. Just boost the brightness and take the small battery life loss in your stride); having no internal storage is a pain (no, it doesn't matter at all if you can put huge micro SD cards in, and you can); the drivers for the DAC are almost impossible to install in Windows (really no, they're not. I just followed the guide and bingo: a great USB DAC as well as a great DAP).
 
So it's a great player and a clear upgrade - for me at least - over the Sansa's that I've owned before. Does it mean that my lust for portable aural pleasure has been sated for good? I suspect not. Those DX90's look kinda interesting to me and the fun of putting Rockbox on them appeals too (Rockbox for the X3 2nd Gen? Well, yes please!) but the price jump to the Ibasso is a pretty big one. So for the time being, the X3 2nd Gen suits me just fine.