FiiO EM3

The FiiO EM3 is FiiO’s new pair of flat-head earbuds. Honestly, my goodwill toward FiiO has been climbing steadily lately.

The accessories are minimal — just the buds themselves and a few foam covers. That’s it.

Since it’s positioned under 100 yuan, this earbud’s strengths and weaknesses are equally obvious.

Let’s start with the downside: the fit. Wearing these things is genuinely uncomfortable. The official line says they use a special plastic that won’t dig into your ears too much, but because the housing itself is huge, no matter how I jam them in, they won’t stay in my ears without falling out. And maybe because I haven’t used flat-head earbuds in a long time, I barely even know what counts as wearing them correctly, which indirectly messes with my judgment of the sound.

Why do I say that? Simple. If I force the buds into my ears, the bass gets huge — but that forced-in state doesn’t last long before they slide out. If I don’t force them and just ease them in slowly, the bass sounds thin. So I can’t figure out what the correct position is supposed to be. Eventually I tried wearing them with the cable over my ear, and found that actually sounded fine. Maybe that’s the right way.

So I’ll judge the sound based on the over-ear fit, no foam covers by default.

The midrange is fairly thick — vocals sit close, positioning is passable, and detail retrieval is normal. Nothing much to say there. As for bass and treble, the highs are clearly weaker than the lows. FiiO doesn’t claim a balanced three-frequency response in its marketing either; it just says these are suited for most people, which presumably means a generic pop tuning. Listening closely, it’s a bit better than that — at least it isn’t all bass all the time — but it’s still far from my requirement of “transparent highs.”

The sound is okay, with a hint of that old MX500 flavor, and somewhat improved. But the price is what it is — under 100 yuan, it’s about what you’d expect. What I think really needs improving is the fit. By the way, these are listed at 47 ohms; when I plugged them into an Aune X1S, the sound got a little better and the highs actually improved.

But seriously, who the hell wants to plug a 100-yuan flat-head earbud into a desktop amp?