Normally, we receive news about cheap earbuds with a shrug. It’s not in the budget class where you find good sound, but Fiio wants to change that with the FW3 True Wireless.
They are so affordable that it’s almost surprising what they have achieved for the money. Fiio claims to have focused on sound quality, and that becomes evident when we read that they have used Qualcomm’s QCC5141 Bluetooth chip, which supports Bluetooth 5.2, but that’s not all. The earbuds also support LDAC, LHDC, AptX Adaptive, AptX, AAC, and SBC, which means they can actually play 24-bit audio files.
And there’s more, the FW3 features an AK4332 D/A converter with an amplifier circuit that drives a 10mm carbon-based dynamic driver. Quite exotic specifications that we typically associate with much more expensive earphones.
The catch is that the FW3 does not come with active noise cancellation (ANC) at all. Fiio explains that they have focused on delivering the best possible sound for the price and that ANC would make the earbuds much more expensive.
The earphones can play for seven hours, and the charging case provides an additional 14 hours of battery life, for a total of 21 hours. In the Fiio Music app for iOS and Android, users have access to a 10-band equalizer, and the FW3 supports Low-latency gaming, promising audio latency of under 100ms.
The earbuds have small physical buttons for audio control and call answering, and the aforementioned app also offers balance adjustment, audio codec selection, and four filter settings for those interested in customizing the sound as much as possible.
The price is set at 110 Euros, which seems very appealing to us. We will certainly test the FW3 as soon as we get our hands on a pair.
