FiiO Q3S

A while back, for some reason I lost my mind and went back down the audiophile money-pit road. This time I was noticeably more broke about it: no four-figure new releases, no $199 AKG n5005, just a calm little DAC purchase.

The reason was simple enough. I had some fairly specific requirements:

• The DAC has to support a 4.4 balanced output
• It also has to have a 3.5 headphone jack
• It has to be portable, suitable for laptop use
• It needs its own power, a battery, but also an option to toggle between “battery power” and “USB power”
• It has to be cheap. I know about the Mojo 2, I just can’t afford it
• Decoding specs shouldn’t be too low

Eventually I found this magical thing, the “FiiO Q3S.” Magical because I have no idea when it came out, FiiO’s official store doesn’t sell it anymore, but you can definitely find traces of it on eBay and Mercari. It matched my decoder needs perfectly — everything I wanted was there, the price wasn’t bad either, just 850, and it even supported installment payments, so I got carried away and bought it.

The packaging is the usual FiiO style, fairly nice, with plenty of included accessories, but it feels pretty knockoff — like that rubber-pad strap, which looks ugly.

I tested it once it arrived and it seemed okay, but the body is just too thin and light, and the so-called “metal shell” is just the cheapest-looking spray-painted aluminum alloy, the kind that makes you feel it’ll scratch and flake at any moment.

Even sitting on a desk it feels like it’s grinding harshly against the surface, and because it’s so light, it’s easy to knock and send skittering.

Battery life is fairly average too. The unit has a switch to toggle between its own battery and USB power, which is a nice touch.

I can’t really evaluate the sound. It doesn’t seem to improve anything; everything about it is “half-assed,” roughly the level of those “portable DACs” from ten years ago.

In the end I used this thing maybe a couple of times after unboxing, then sold it on Mercari and swapped it for something with more pleasant surprises.

Put simply, this thing is stuck in an awkward middle ground. Cheaper than this, you might as well buy a little Type-C dongle; more expensive, you might as well buy a big brick. It’s not hard to see why FiiO stopped selling it. If you can avoid buying it, do.