FiiO QX13 Review

Design

• Carbon-fibre or aluminium construction
• Protective leather case is magnetic

The FiiO QX13 is a compact (64x31x13mm, HWD) device, and it doesn’t weigh much either – but exactly how it weighs depends on the type of material you fancy. If you go with the ‘21 layers of carbon fibre that means it’s six times stronger than steel option, you’re looking at 33.7g, or you can suffer the burden of 39.2g if you choose the ‘laser-engraved, elegant yet advanced’ aluminium alternative.

Either way, the front of your QX13 will mostly be made of third-generation Corning high-strength glass – it’s tough, scratch-resistant and there are three small physical control buttons in a row just beneath it.

The screen is a full-color, bright and sharp – but at a touch over 50mm on the diagonal it’s frankly not as big as FiiO seems to think it is.

The set-up menus it displays are very small indeed, and when the machine is functioning the amount of information it tries to display (file type, file size, mode confirmation, UAC type, EQ setting, volume level (selectable between 60 and 120 steps, incidentally) and more besides) means it’s not always especially clear what exactly is going on.

You’ll need better eyesight than mine if you’re going to remain fully up-to-date with what the machine is up to.

At the top edge of the QX13 there are 3.5mm and 4.4mm balanced output sockets – the smaller one can either be analogue or SPDIF, the choice is yours. At the bottom edge there’s a USB-C socket for data transfer, and on the right edge there’s another USB-C for powering the internal battery – both slots can be used at the same time if required. On the left side, meanwhile, there’s a switching for activating (or deactivating) Desktop mode.

All of these interfaces can be accessed even when the QX13 is wearing its protective leather case. FiiO has ingeniously made the case magnetic – so if you’re using an iOS device it fits exactly where a MagSafe accessory fits, keeping things nice and tidy.

Android users will be relieved to find there’s a magnetic ring provided in the FiiO’s packaging, so something similar can be achieved. 

Specification

• ESS Sabre ES9027SPRO DAC
• Texas Instruments amplification
• Intelligent Desktop mode for extra power

Yes, it’s small – but don’t imagine that means there isn’t plenty going on inside. This is FiiO we’re dealing with, and the company isn’t about to let a trifle like ‘physical constraints’ prevent it from specifying a product as fully as it can.

ESS Sabre is the most fashionable digital-to-analogue conversion company out there at the moment, and the QX13 uses its ES9027SPRO chipset to do the business. In an ‘eight channels in parallel’ arrangement and with a couple of noise-suppressing ES9132 regulators handling output-matching duties on each audio channel, the ES9028SPRO can cope with resolutions of up to 32-bit/768kHz and DSD512 – which should be plenty in any real-world application.

Once the signal is in the analogue domain, it’s dealt with by six Texas Instruments op-amps laid out in such a way as to minimise crosstalk and eradicate (as far as possible) interference.

Careful shielding of the analogue and digital stages makes for excellent heat dissipation, and thanks to this (plus the optimised op-amp arrangement), once it’s in Desktop mode the FiiO can summon power comparable to that of a full-size headphone amplifier. High-precision power regulation allows it to adjust the gain and output power of its headphone amplification in response to the load your headphones present, too.

And there’s plenty more where that came from. The use of XMOS crystal oscillators allows the QX13 to be, among other things, compatible with FiiO’s 10-band lossless PEQ that’s available via the company’s Android control app or the web – it’s the same system that first showed up in the four-figure K19 desktop DAC/headphone amplifier (although that device uses a humungous 31-band equivalent, admittedly) and it allows the user a huge amount of input into the sound they achieve.

The QX13 is compatible with FiiO’s ESTICK micro power-bank. Its ability to function in UAC 1.0 mode means it can be used with Nintendo Switch, Sony PlayStation 5 and other games-orientated devices. And so on and so on… like I said, never forget this is FiiO we’re dealing with.

Performance

• Open, nicely defined presentation
• Detail and dynamism in equal measure
• Can get quite treble-happy

There’s plenty to enjoy about the way the FiiO sounds – the star-rating at the top of the review gives it away, doesn’t it? But what’s probably most immediately impressive when you introduce the QX13 to the USB-C output of your laptop or smartphone is how open, defined and spacious its presentation is.

Somehow, it manages to make a 24-bit/48kHz FLAC file of James Holden’s Imagine This is a High Dimensional Space of All Possibilities sound absolutely wide open and yet quite tightly unified at the same time. This is no mean feat, and there are plenty of headphone amp/DAC alternatives that can’t bring this sort of expansive focus to bear on a recording as relatively complex as this.

The same tunes reveal how adept the FiiO is at identifying and extracting even the finest details. No matter how minor or fleeting an occurrence in a mix, how transient the harmonic over- or undertones in a specific instrument might be, the QX13 never lets them out of its sight.

This ability with small harmonic variations and with the broader dynamics of volume and intensity makes for a presentation that’s both vigorous and informative. The fact that the FiiO controls its low-frequency presence so carefully means it can express rhythms with absolute confidence, too – which only adds to the impression of energy.

In the midrange, the QX13 seems able to engage with voices on an almost emotional level – its presentation of vocals is direct and positive, and there’s ample character revealed along with the more straightforward stuff regarding tone and technique. And throughout, from the top of the frequency range to the bottom, the FiiO is a balanced and even-handed listen.

Issues, such as they are, all centre around the way the QX13 deals with the upper part of the frequency range. It’s not that its treble reproduction is especially pronounced when compared to everything that’s going on beneath it – the frequency response is smooth and consistent.

Tonality, though, is a different matter. From the bottom end to the upper part of the midrange, the FiiO is a quite neutral and naturalistic listen – but once upper midrange becomes high frequencies, it undergoes a bit of a character shift.

In the simplest terms, the QX13 attacks treble sounds with altogether too much enthusiasm. Its top-end drive and energy all too readily translates to hardness or edginess, and there’s very little within the set-up menus that can meaningfully mitigate this trait. And if you end up listening to recordings that have a high-frequency emphasis, or a source device that’s similarly treble-happy, things can get pretty fatiguing pretty quickly. 

Should you buy it?