OK, so I got these in about 3-4 days ago, and I think I have enough of a handle on them to be able to write something. So here is my review, which I'll leave here for now (until I can figure out how to create a new listing for the F5 under the Head Gear section and put my review there).
FiiO F5 – A Warm, Inviting Experience
Pros: Sound quality, comfort, good amount of accessories
Cons: Warmer sound may not be for everyone, some ear tips are hard to put on
Introduction
Tl;dr: FiiO sent me a review unit for my honest opinion, and a bit of background about myself.
A little bit about me: I consider myself to be a relatively inexperienced audiophile, having only taken this hobby seriously for the past 2 or 3 years. Funnily enough, I actually began to take an interest in my headphone system with the purchase of a FiiO E7. The next logical upgrade from there was the FiiO E17, which I appreciated but soon found it a bit lacking in sound quality after I was exposed to other audio equipment. Now, after having been away from FiiO for a while I am now back with their X7 DAP.
I tend to like a neutral sound signature, perhaps with a bit of warmth. But if one were to ask me to pick between a very warm or a very bright sound signature, I’d go towards the brighter one. I like a large variety of music including rock, pop, jazz, classical and orchestral, J-Pop and J-Rock, and C-Pop.
Before I begin with the rest of the review, I would like to say that I paired the FiiO F5 with the FiiO X5 3rd gen and the Questyle QP1R in the making of this review.
I would like to thank FiiO for letting me check out their new F5 IEM in exchange for my honest opinion!
Specs
Before we go onto the rest of the review, a specifications table might be useful.
Driver Type
Dynamic (13.6mm)Frequency Response
20Hz ~ 40kHzSensitivity
102 db/mWImpedance
32 ohmPlug Type
3.5mm gold-plated stereo jack (CTIA standard) /
2.5mm TRRS straight gold-plated stereo jack
Cord Length
1.2mWeight
21gColor
BlackDetachable Cable Design
Yes (standard MMCX connector)MSRP
US $64.99
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Packaging and Accessories
Tl;dr: FiiO gives you a decent amount of accessories – including a hard carrying case and even a 2.5mm balanced cable.
If you’ve seen FiiO’s recent designs for other boxes (such as the X5iii and the X7), you’ll know what to expect here. The F5 comes in a box very similar to those players, with another box on the inside that you can take the lid off of. It’s packaged quite nicely actually, especially for its price point.
Inside the box you’ll find a generous amount of accessories. When you first look in the provided hard carrying case, you’ll discover the F5 IEMs themselves and six pairs of ear tips. There are two kinds of ear tips – one set which I will call the “black-cores”, and the other set which I’ll call the “color-cores”. The black-core tips have a squishy, soft core while the color-cores have a much harder core. Small, medium, and large sized tips for each set are provided. As we’ll go into later, these different sets of eartips do provide different sound signatures.
The F5 also comes with two cables – one is 3.5mm TRRS cable that also contains in-line controls with a microphone on it – pretty handy for usage with a smartphone. The other is a 2.5mm balanced cable purely for audio – very nice, and this is especially great of FiiO to do so for the price point they are targeting with this headphone.
Quick note on the quality of the microphone on the 3.5mm cable – it’s good quality. I tried using it in phone calls, and pretty much everybody I had a phone call with said the mic sounded clear, and easily picked up my voice. So the in-line controls are very much a worthwhile part of the F5 package.
Overall, FiiO seems to provide you with a good amount of accessories for the F5 – definitely a plus in my book.
Build Quality, Design, and Comfort
Tl;dr: Excellent comfort, well-designed cables. The F5 also seems to work with a bunch of different tips.
First off, while the build quality and design of the actual F5 IEMs won’t set anybody’s world on fire, it’s actually quite good for its price range. The F5’s shell is made up of plastic that doesn’t feel too cheap and doesn’t feel too fragile. I’ve actually squeezed the F5 pretty hard in trying to get some of the ear tips on (more on that later) and the IEM is still good as new.
Moving onto the cables, they’re good quality. Not excellent, but pretty good. Both the 3.5mm and 2.5mm cables use MMCX connectors that snapped into the F5’s body easily and securely. I like how both the 3.5mm and 2.5mm cables aren’t prone to tangling, seem reasonably tough (I haven’t subject them to that kind of abuse) and don’t provide too much microphonics when moving around with them. Also, the actual in-line controls on the 3.5mm cable are well-designed. The buttons there are quite tactile, and I especially like how the play/answer call button is recessed enough so that one can distinguish it from the other buttons quite easily just by touch.
As for comfort – FiiO’s marketing materials aren’t lying, this is a seriously comfortable IEM that I could wear for hours. The angled design of the body (somewhat like the FiiO EX1) allows the F5 to not sit in my ear too deeply yet still manage a good seal. This is very much a relief compared to the deep insertion of my Etymotic ER4PT that I normally use.
As for the comfort of the tips, they’re just like any other decent silicon tips – they’re comfortable and allow you to get a decent seal easily. While the medium-sized black-core and color-core tips both fit my ears the best, I actually found the small-sized tips to fit well in my ears too. As for what tips you can use, any of the tips that fit on my Hifiman RE-00 also worked for the F5 too. Also, while I didn’t specifically try it out, I suspect that any tips that work with the FLC8S also will work the F5 since I’m actually using RE-00 tips on my FLC8S.
About the passive noise canceling the F5 provides – it’s decent, though it’s not excellent. Let’s not even compare this to my ER4, the F5 doesn’t cancel out noise nearly as well my FLC8S – probably due to the somewhat shallow insertion of the F5. With the right-sized ear tips, the F5 does cancel out noise somewhat better than the EX1 though.
Remember how I talked about squeezing the F5 pretty hard to get some of the tips on? Specifically, I somewhat had trouble putting on the color-core tips, whose hard core really makes it somewhat hard to squeeze it into a shape so I can get the tip around the nozzle of the F5 IEM.
FiiO really seems to have nailed it in the comfort and design aspects. I don’t really have much to complain about.
Sound Quality
Tl;dr: The F5 features a tastefully done darker sound signature with notably good bass. Compared to the EX1, it’s hard to say which is better and this will come down to preference.
Now onto the most important part. How does it sound?
Overall, the F5 presents a warmer, darker, smoother sound signature. With a good seal, bass is very much elevated above neutral, with a slight mid-to-upper bass emphasis but sub-bass is still very strong. I’m tempted to say that it’s somewhat encroaching on bass head territory. And despite this rather heavy bass presence, it doesn’t actually get in the way of the mids most of the time.
Bass quality is very good on the F5 – even though there’s a lot of it, I never felt that it was out of control. I also felt that the bass was very punchy, quite detailed and textured.
Mids are also somewhat forward on the F5, with the treble being rather shelved. And while the treble is definitely not as prominent as I prefer, I do think it is still pretty detailed for the price. Both the mids and treble on the F5 are smooth.
Dynamics on the F5 are quite good. Explosive passages where the music gets quite loud all of a sudden are rendered with gusto on the F5, especially with that bass slam I mentioned earlier.
The F5 also boasts some pretty good separation in a moderately wide-and-deep soundstage for an IEM. Imaging and layering/depth perception were decent, so I was relatively easily able to tell where the sounds were coming from within the music. I really have no big complaints here.
Remember I mentioned earlier about the different sets of ear tips having different sounds? The black-core tips to my ears give slightly more elevated bass (both mid and sub-bass seemed to be equally elevated) while the color-cores give you slightly less bass. Both the mids and treble seemed to be presented in about the same manner using either set of tips.
However, one thing that I found nifty about the F5 was that I could put on the small-sized color-core ear tips (one size smaller than the medium-sized tips which give me a perfect seal) and get a much more neutral sound signature. No, it does not turn the F5 into something like the ER4 with this change, but it did bring the bass significantly down without totally making it disappear. In fact, the bass even with less of a seal was definitely still prominent, and the mids and highs were relatively unaffected. This results in a sound signature kind of a like a slightly warmer Sennheiser HD650, and was my preferred way to listen.
I thought it was pretty cool for the F5 to pull off two main different sound signatures like that depending on the tips you use. And of course, the different sets of included ear tips also allow you to slightly further tune the F5 to your preferred sound. However, no matter what tips or seals I tried, I could not get more treble out of the F5 – it simply wasn’t tuned to be that way.
Honestly, the F5 presents a darker and smooth sound signature that is executed in a manner above what you would normally expect for something in its price range. So while the F5 is not my preferred sound signature, I still think its overall sound quality should actually be commended, especially for its price.
Comparison with FiiO EX1 (first generation)
Something that people might be interested in is how the F5 compares with the FiiO EX1, since the EX1 (and now the EX1 2nd gen) was originally the IEM offered by FiiO at the price point that the F5 is slated to go for. So I managed to borrow a first-gen EX1 (sorry, I couldn’t get my hands on the 2nd gen version) to be able to compare it to the F5.
Overall, I would say that the two are comparable in quality but offer very different sound signatures. I felt that width and depth of the soundstage, as well as the separation, imaging, and layering abilities of the two IEMs were very similar. Overall detail level between the two IEMs is also very similar too – I couldn’t reliably say which IEMs gave me clearer picture of the tiniest details in the music.
However, with a good seal the F5 offers much more bass than the EX1. If you purposely get less of a seal by using smaller-than-usual eartips with the F5, then the bass level decreases to slightly less than that of the EX1. No matter what kind of seal you use with the F5, however, I simply feel that the F5 had a more pleasing bass with better punch and slam. I would probably also say that the F5 had slightly more detailed bass too.
Mids on the EX1 are a bit recessed compared to those on the F5. The upper-mids also seem to be more prominent on the EX1 – at times, this was a bit too much and didn’t sound that realistic to me, while the F5 handled these frequencies better. However, I do like that the EX1 had more prominent treble. But it’s hard to say whether the F5 or the EX1 is actually better. At times, I preferred the EX1’s increased treble presence, while in others I preferred the F5’s bass punch and less wonkiness in the upper-mid range. Overall, for most people I think it’s going to come down to preferences and what type of music you listen to when deciding which IEM is better.
Conclusion
Tl;dr: If you’re looking for a multi-purpose IEM with a darker sound under $100, you should strongly consider the F5.
I think it’s obvious in the rest of the review that I think pretty well of the F5, despite it offering a sound that I usually don’t prefer. First and foremost, its sound quality is an obvious strength of the F5, with bass that I think is excellent especially for the price. Combine that sound quality with excellent comfort, somewhat tunable sound, and truly useful included accessories (with microphone and balanced cables) and I think you have a winner in the under $100 IEM category. Honestly, for this entire package FiiO could have priced it at over $100 and I still think it wouldn’t be overpriced. At its current price of $64.99, it’s a fantastic deal considering the whole package you are getting.
Thanks for reading my (somewhat) long review of the FiiO F5!
Oh, nice.
Like the bass more than the previous FiiO IEM. Does not feel as heavy. I always worried if the EX-1 fell out my ear it would hit my DAP and crack that puppy's screen.
Both of you, really good review.
Can anyone compare these with RHA MA750 or GR07BE in similar range. Soundstage and overall sound signature?
