FiiO M15:- The Flagship impressions!!

FiiO, a china based digital audio player brand ended 2019 with a very high note, introducing the world with their flagship device the FiiO M15, on 28th decemeber,2019.
The FiiO M15 is said to be the flagship model of their lineup, priced around double the price of its previous flagship the FiiO M11 pro which gathered praises with its sound quality all around the world.

The device released for the world on 6th january,2020 and today we got our hands on a unit for unboxing and initial impressions for the same.

so before we tell you about it here are the technical specifications for FiiO M15.

Technical Specifications:-

>Dual Flagship AKM4499EQ DAC chips
>Dual Flagship Dac setup AK4499EQ
>Lightining Fast SoC Exynos 7872 Processor
>3 Gb Ram
>64 GB in-Built storage expandable with upto 2Tb memory card
>5.15" HD display(720P) with 18:9 support with Corning Gorilla Glass
>2.4/5GHz dual band Wi-fi Support
>7490mAh Battery with 15 hours of Music Playback
>2.5mm balanced, 3.5 standard and 4.4 balanced port
>Qualcomm Flagship Bluetooth Chip CSR8675 with two way LDAC Bluetooth
>Two Class Leading Femtosecond Crystal Oscillators from NDK,Japan
>XMOS XUF208 Control Chip which supports direct decoding 768kHz/32bit, Native DSD512 support
>Fully Decode (8x) the Original MQA Files
>Professional ADC Volume Adjustment Mode
>CNC Machined Aluminium-Magnesium Alloy Chassis
>Five Physical Buttons with Customizable Functions
>Solid North American Black Walnut Wooden Enclosure
>Independent "HOLD" Switch, PCB Coated with Graphite and Thermally Conductive Silicon Grease
>All to DSD 2nd Gen
>One-click Standby Mode
>21W Dual Quick Charging
>Android / Pure Music / USB DAC
>FiiO Link, DLNA, AirPlay, WiFi Song Transfer support
>FiiO Original Music APP

Unboxing Impressions:-

Well, the FiiO M15 is a flagship model DAP, it's packaging reflects the same, it comes in a very beautiful black cardboard box with FiiO M15 DAP image printed on the front with holographic reflections.
When you pull out from the inside there is a simple plain black box with M15 printed on it and inside the plain black box lies a beautiful wooden finish box which when pulled up, let's you meet your beautiful FiiO M15 digital Audio Player.

The FiiO M15 itself is a very premium built with a beautiful 5.15" HD display and carbon fibre back but we will discuss about this in the build quality section.

Below the Dap you find manual and a micro sd card eject pin as the memory card slot is a closed container just like sim slots in new mobile phones now.

The FiiO has upped their game in terms of packaging as compared to the basic models like the FiiO M9 and gives a premium feel to the whole package and to be very honest they should do this as this is a flagship model.

The package contents are as follows:-
>1 FiiO M15 DAP
>1 Usb Type C charging cable
>Manual
>Warranty Card

Build Quality:-

In terms of build quality the FiiO M15 carries a very premium built with aluminium-magnesium alloy material designed with beautiful corners and an analog volume wheel at the top.
The front carries a 5.15" beautiful corning gorilla glass with carbon fibre panel at the back, which gives a premium and strong feel to the dap.

The screen is an HD display with a resolution of 1440p*720p with crisp and detailed images with 18:9 display and good contrast ratio ensures good display even in harsh sunlight conditions.

On the Top, you see an analog volume rotating wheel, which makes it easier to change the volume even with screen turned off, alongside the analog volume wheel there are three headphone slots, 2.5mm balanced slot, 3.5mm standard plug slot and 4.4mm balanced plug slot.
So any kind of earphones or wires you have the FiiO M15 supports all of them right out of the box.

On the left side, the curved body has five button setup, top one for power, the next three buttons are music controls and one at the last that is multi-function customizable and you can assign different functions to it.Please note that above all these five buttons lies a hold switch which prevents accidental volume knob movements in the pocket.

The right side of FiiO M15 has a finger grip part with no buttons there.

At the bottom there is Quick Charging compatible USB Type C charging socket and Micro SD card Slot. Let me tell you that this beauty carries a whooping 7490 mAh battery, that provides upto 15 hours of music playback and support Quick Charging 2.0.

Also the FiiO M15 supports memory cards upto 2TB with no zero lag.

Overall the DAP looks and feels very premium to hold,with amazing ergonomics and tough build quality.

Here are a few initial impressions by us for the FiiO M15.

User Interface:-

Powered with Samsung Exynos 7872 chipset and 3Gb ram, the user interface is very quick and smooth,even with about 4000 flac songs loaded into the memory card the transitions are smooth and crisp.The cover arts load quickly, with no lag and no software issues.

The FiiO M15 runs Android straight out of the box which also enables us to use different streaming apps on the player.

With support of 2.4GHz and 5GHz dual wi-fi band the wi-fi reception is smooth and lag free, there will be no lags in internet surfing and tidal or other streaming apps usage.

Crisp Display with Corning Gorilla Glass:-

The FiiO M15 comes with a 5.15" HD display with corning gorilla glass, this display is very crisp and bright even in bright sunlight the screen is just brilliant and crisp.
The display has a whooping resolution of 1440p*720p and offers crisp image display with upto 10 finger multi touch gesture options.

The display also supports double tap to wake feature straight out of the box.

Sound Quality:-

Whenever we are buying a new Digital Audio Player, we are always worried about it's pairing with our headphones/earphones or mostly worried about its sound quality but in case of FiiO M15, it sounds just like it is made to sound.

Like A Flagship Device.

The FiiO M15 has three different earphone slots, be it 4.4 balanced, 3.5mm standard or 2.5 balanced port the FiiO M15 has it all, so it will be compatible
with all of your earphones and headphones.

The DAP is powered by dual flagship DAC's AK4499EQ and two class-leading Femtosecond Crystal Oscillators from NDK, Japan which ensures there is
no jitter or no noise floor in our music.

The songs just sound brilliant and full of life, we tested multiple FLAC files and they just sound full of details.

We have tested multiple earphones and headphones with the FiiO M15, like the Moondrop Blessing 2, Dunu DK-3001 Pro and it made them full of life, brilliant and quick bass response natural and lush mids with full of details, and smooth and extensive treble response.

To be very honest it is not which DAC is used it's always how its implemented that determines the quality of sound and here in FiiO M15, FiiO has nailed it with the implementation.

The Sound is crystal clear with wide staging and brilliant crispy details in the instruments. 

It actually lets the earphones shine with all their glory and life, the Dap is able to decode 8 times the master quality audio files and not lag even a bit, the dap is very powerful and it just presents all the details and music to the earphones and let them shine. 

The DAP provides good extensions at the lower and the higher end so that there is no bass roll off or missing treble details.

The FiiO M15 supports many formats ranging from flac's,m4a,mp3,AAC,wav and many more, the DAP supports decoding upto 768kHz/32 bit files and upto Native DSD 512 support.
But I personally tried upto Native DSD 256 and there was no input lag, user interface was also smooth and lag free.

Bluetooth Connectivity:-

The FiiO M15 supports two way bluetooth, you can receive bluetooth signal from other source device and this can further play it on a different bluetooth device,
like playing the file in your phone via bluetooth and enhancing the signal here using Qualcomm flagship bluetooth chip the CSR 8675 and playing it on your bluetooth headphones.

The Dap supports different bluetooth codecs like the LDAC,apt-X,apt-X HD and many more.

Battery:-

Even though the company claims a battery life of upto 15 hours, I tried with different file formats every time navigating from here to there to check if there is any lag or not, the battery lasted for about 13.5 hours for me while I switched between different headphones, in 4.4 balanced, 2.5 balanced and 3.5 standard plug slots.

And with a good battery life, the FiiO M15 also supports Quick Charging 2.0 which gives you enough juice of music with only 1 hour of quick charging.

Final Impressions:-

The FiiO M15 is actually a very brilliant flagship DAP with support for all the formats and with latest hardware straight out of the box.

You don't need to depend on different amp modules as FiiO M15 itself is a very capable and tough DAP which is really worthy of being a flagship device.

The FiiO M15 is a complete package as a portable audio player for longer listening sessions as it supports long battery life and quick charging 2.0.