Let’s review FiiO Q5s! FiiO is well-known among audiophiles. They have variety of products in variety of prices. Their headphones, amps and DACs always have been above-average quality and with these products FiiO takes place in every Audiphile gear recommendation lists.
FiiO Q5s is modular amp/dac which supports Bluetooth 5.0 and plays DSD256 up to 32bit 768kbps. Let’s begin!
Box and Functions
Box is FiiO’s standardized box. Various informations written on 4 sides of the box. FiiO Q5s have rich box contents: 3.5mm to 3.5mm plug, Lightning to micro-USB cable, Mini to Coaxial adapter, T5 screwdiver for modular block, replacement screws, mesh carrying bag, 4 rubber bands, translucent protective plate and hardpaper that guides the buttons etc… The guidal hardpaper is quite useful tho.
Q5s’s design is basically a metallic ractangular box with modern lines. Buttons are flattened for avoiding misclicks. Volume pot is secured, also you can turn off the device by turning down the pot by 0. The built-in am3e module have 3.mm and 2.5mm/4.4mm balanced outputs. Also there’s micro usb down there for charging and transfering.
Dual AK4493EQ DAC Chips XMOS XUF208 USB Decoding Chip Audio up to 768 kHz/32-Bit Native DSD Decoding Bluetooth 5.0 with LDAC, aptX HD & More Coaxial, Optical, and USB Line Inputs 2.5mm, 3.5mm, and 4.4mm Line Outputs
FiiO Q5s – Sound
With LDAC Connection:
Sound Quality deserves its price point, sound is gentle and neutral. Background is vanta-black. Amplifies without messing with bass/gain switches. Resolution is high.Instruments are much more emphatic and separation is much better. You will hear the details you’ve never heard before, thanks to high imaging capability and black background. Q5s will make you love your good ol’ E1000 again…
With USB Connection:
Mr.HardToDrive LCD2.0 have soft presentation. Sound volume is on 50/60 but instruments are barely separated. So that means it’s not that good enough to drive 70Ω Headphone that juices up with amplifiers which competes with truck engine.
With SHP9600 (SHP9500’s descendant) volume gets very loud while presentation is smooth. Meanwhile we get really good and powerful sound with Final E1000. Stage widens, separation increases and sound gains resolution. You may hear subbass frequencies that you’ve never heard in other amps. The real shows begins when you plug the 3.5mm to 3.5mm cable to your audio output! Sound brightens and sharpens. Therefore overall presentation gains contrast, binaural effect and natural extensions become irresistible. Good news for bassheads: the bass also fills its body.
Fiio Q5s – Conclusion
We’ve measured this DAC/Amp with 3 different headphone, but even with the stock module FiiO Q5s sounds lovely in both desktop and mobile uses. The details like leather plating are really nice touch. If we compare Q5s against BTR5, Q5s is better than BTR5 in every way. The price is 3x much tho. And fills up the eargears power capacity limits more satisfying than it.
Much thanks to AdvancedMP3PlayersTR for sending this review sample!
