FiiO E5 Headphone Amplifier Review December 13, 2009 at 4:20 pm
If you have a headphone with more than 32 Ohm requirement and needed amplification power to run it. The tiny FiiO E5 headphone amplifier seems to fit in the gap to your requirement to get more juice from your ipod or portable player for you headphone while on the move. Due to the portable player low power profile by design will not have the amplification power to run those high end headphones that need 64 ohm or 300 ohm so even if you plug your high end headphone on the portable player it will sound very soft and lack the umph! to drive the headphone. FiiO E5 was design to address that requirement for people who are on the move with their high end phone and portable player.
The FiiO E5 is a tiny device like the size of a tiny matchbox and the width matching with the ipod nano and same goes with the rest of the styling like ipod nano. The build quality is good and come with digital volume control which can be annoying when trying to quickly turn up or down the volume and feature a bass boast to give more bass to the sound and the build-in lithium ion battery will last up to 20 hours per full charge through USB and lastly come with a clip to hang on. All of this comes with a price of just 20.00 USD.
Most importantly is how does the FiiO E5 sound and if you are thinking that this small little cheap device is able to improve your sound quality from your portable, think again! My test setup was using the Sony A-806 Walkman MP3 and AKG K 701 with 62 Ohm requirement. After making lots comparison with and without FiiO E5 with many 320 kbps MP3s my conclusion, yes it does boast the sound volume and give more bass to the music but sacrifice of sound details and texture. To be honest I would rather use a cheaper headphone with less than 32 ohm with my portable player that can easily sound better than with FiiO + AKG K 701. If you turn on the bass boast it will make it sound even worst. The sound with FiiO E5 is bright and bassy that over shadowed some the music details and even if I crank up the Sony Walkman MP3 to the max on the AKG K 701 it sounded better than with FiiO E5 although very soft.
FiiO E5 is cheap but not cheerful because I feel it does not sound acceptable even though it is cheap, I would recommend spend a bit more on a good pair of headphones that work well with portable player rather than spend on a tiny little box that does not do justice with the high end headphone. Or alternatively you can go for better portable headphone amp from iBasso or Graham Slee. If you are on a budget and needed to something fix the soft volume for the large headphone when on the move, FiiO E5 is the only choice to have.
Overall Rating: 2.5 out of 5
Thanks mate, I learned something new today. Never know that there is so much equipment needed to run good audio.