FiiO have recently discontinued the X3iii music player and brought out a new M series of portable hi-res players, namely the M7, at £159, and the M9, at £229. However, the one we are most excited about is the M6, which costs £135. The M6 is tiny with dimensions of 53.3mm x 92.5mm x 11.5mm and weighs only 83 grams. This makes it an excellent choice as a starter portable music player, or, because of its size, a second player that you can take around with you when a bulkier one might be less convenient.
Despite the price the M6 is full of features. It has an anodized, CNC aluminium alloy body paired with 2.5D glass and a 3.2 inch IPS HD touchscreen. It uses the ESS Sabre 9018Q2C chip, which is both a DAC and an amplifier. It has 2GB built-in storage and a micro SD slot which will support cards up to 2TB in the future, with 512GB being the largest capacity card currently available. It has a FiiO-customized Android OS with support for Wi-Fi music streaming services. Tidal is already loaded, and there are many other whitelisted apps that can be added like, Qobuz, Spotify, Roon, Deezer and Bandcamp. The Wi-Fi feature also allows you to play music over DLNA and for the M6 to receive OTA firmware updates.
It boasts dual-mode Bluetooth 4.2 with full format support -- aptX/aptX HD/LDAC/HBA/SBC, as well as AirPlay. You can use it with an external DAC, or as an asynchronous USB DAC for your Windows or Mac computer. It can also be remotely controlled by your smartphone through FiiO link. As with most FiiO models it can play virtually any file format up to 24bit/192kHz, as well as natively supporting DSD64 and DSD128.
We hope to have the M6 on demonstration, and in stock, by the end of the month.