Was obtainable at very attractive prices and with very attractive bundles before FiiO banned sellers from accepting coupons for their products/offering them in product bundles.
May have come with a screen protector already applied from the factory (don't really remember this that well anymore).
Came with a nice, soft, protective silicone case that covers everything but the screen and ports.
I'm pretty sure that it came with a binaural Chesky Hi-Res album already loaded onto the internal memory.
Physical hold switch.
8 GB of internal memory.
Really nice, unique design.
High build quality.
Nice form factor and fantastic ergonomics.
Well-defined accentuation point of the buttons.
Decent screen and resolution, but black is more of a dark grey than black.
Went through several firmware updates over time (the last one was the final one which ended the product support and left some things still undone), some of which changed the UI quite severely; however not all bugs have been fixed so far.
Gapless playback works perfectly with FLAC files, just as it should.
Gapless playback works perfectly with FLAC files, just as it should.
Fluent navigation and operation.
Some nice and handy settings and options but also a bit clumsy in some sub-menus (especially that rotating quick menu on the playback screen that pops up by holding the "back" button).
What sort of sucks: the album cover isn't fully shown on the playing screen as it is zoomed in wherefore its left and right side are cut off.
What also sort of sucks is that the playback continues automatically after turning on the device (it's good that the player remembers the last position (which can also be disabled), but there's no option to disable the auto resume feature).
What I dislike about the volume buttons is that the first click only "activates" the volume
control but doesn't adjust the volume (it's even one additional click if
the screen is off (the same applies to the play/pause and skip buttons - they only operate when the screen is on, an it's something that cannot be changed in the settings)).
So yeah, good design, build quality and hardware, but could use a few software improvements.
Sound:
Volume Control:
120 volume steps plus mute (seems like the two gain stages were ditched (the setting doesn't change anything) in favour of adding automatic gain control and increasing the amount of volume steps from 60 to 120 compared to earlier firmware releases).
Dedicated volume buttons, but no volume control in several menus (where the buttons change the options).
Somewhat too coarse step size at the lower end of the adjustment range for my liking.
Using very and extremely sensitive in-ears, I would definitely not mid if the lowest possible volume were a good bit quieter in order to listen more quietly.
Frequency Response (Headphone Output, No Load):
Output Impedance:
Only extremely small deviation from unloaded measurement. Calculated output impedance at around tiny 0.1 Ohms, which is perfect and pretty much as good as it possibly gets.
Hiss Performance:
It's interesting to note that the hiss output is volume-dependent on the X3 and increases somewhat the higher the volume is (it's still mild to moderate at those settings when testing with empty audio tracks), which seems to be due to the automatic gain selection with the latest firmware that has 120 volume steps instead of 60. It's generally a really high-pitched hissing.
However, even using extremely sensitive in-ears such as my Campfire Audio Andromeda or Shure SE846, it is somewhere between "mild to at most moderate" (Andromeda) and "mild" (SE846).
(Using the (analogue) bass and treble adjustment adds hiss. Using sensitive in-ears, it also comes with a loud pop/crack when it's enabled or disabled.)
(Using the (analogue) bass and treble adjustment adds hiss. Using sensitive in-ears, it also comes with a loud pop/crack when it's enabled or disabled.)
Therefore, the FiiO X3 exhibits (very) good hiss performance with extremely and very sensitive in-ears.
Subjective Sound Impressions:
Clean, transparent and neutral, as it could be expected. Using extremely sensitive in-ears, though, I would prefer if the lowest possible volume setting were even lower in order to being able to listen more quietly.
Conclusion:
Really good hardware with some room for software improvements (that will never happen as the original X3 doesn't receive software support anymore).