Philips Fidelio FA3 Review

Design

• Gloss black finish
• Magnetically attached grilles

The Fidelio FA3 is a bit too large, at 303 x 170 x 211mm (HWD), to be a realistic proposition for use on a desktop. Ideally the speakers should be on stands, or a shelf of appropriate depth – or, if you intend to make full use of that HDMI ARC socket, either side of a television screen.

The only drawback here, though, is the physical design of the cabinets. There’s a slight wedge effect at the bottom of each enclosure that means the drivers are facing upwards slightly rather than firing forwards.

If positioned on a nice low surface this is a good thing – but when they’re on stands or a shelf at sort-of regulation height, the FA3 fire above, rather than directly at, your ears. Unless you like to listen while standing up, anyway. 

There’s no issue with the way the cabinets are built or finished, at least. The high-gloss black is smoothly applied, and the gentle curves at the cabinet corners give a mildly upmarket look – the plastic shell of each cabinet includes 45% RCS-certified recycled material in its construction. Magnetically attached grilles cover the drivers rather than the entire front baffle, if that’s the sort of look you prefer. 

There’s a small, predictably humdrum, remote control handset, for instance – it takes care of the headline functions, although having just one button to select either the optical or the HDMI input while another allows you to select either the USB-C or analogue input, and yet another is tasked with switching between Bluetooth and Auracast, is definitely suboptimal. Access to bass and treble controls, as well as six EQ presets, is a worthwhile touch though.

The primary speaker has some controls on its rear panel, too. There’s a volume dial that needs too much winding to have a meaningful effect, a button to initiate wireless pairing between the speakers, another to cycle through your input options, and a power on/off switch.

Features

• 25mm titanium dome tweeter; 127mm glass-fibre mid/bass driver
• Bluetooth 5.4 with LDAC codec compatibility
• 100 watts of Class D power

Another means of controlling the FA3 is the free Philips Entertainment app. As well as playback control and access to those presets (Balanced, Warm, Bright, Powerful, Clear and Custom’ the last of which responds to user-controllable Bass and Treble adjustment dials), it can let the primary speaker know if it’s the left or the right channel.

It also has input selection, naturally, and allows access to a suite of ambient sound settings (everything from Ancient Wind and Ocean to Bubbles and Sonar). It duplicates the layout of the remote control handset (but thankfully with a single button for each input) and allows you to check for software updates too.  

The FA3 loudspeaker is a two-way design – there’s a 25mm titanium dome tweeter above a 127mm glass-fibre mid/bass driver at the front of the cabinet and a small reflex port opening towards the top of the rear.

It’s an arrangement Philips suggests results in a frequency response of 40Hz – 40kHz, which is very impressive indeed for a speaker of this modest size and price if it’s anything like accurate. 

This is an active system, which means both speakers require mains power and have the figure-of-eight socket to get it. After that, it’s very much a Primary and Secondary set-up: the rear of the secondary speaker features only a coaxial input for the optional wired connection to its partner (in addition to its reflex port and mains socket).

The primary speaker, meanwhile, has a USB-C slot (which can be used both for playback and for servicing), a digital optical input, an HDMI ARC connection, and a line-level analogue input on stereo RCAs.

The primary speaker is also where Bluetooth pairing takes place – the FA3 is packing Bluetooth 5.4 LE Audio connectivity and is compatible with SBC, AAC, LC3 and LDAC codecs. Auracast technology is on board too, which allows the FA3 to easily become part of a multi-speaker system when working with appropriate partners.

Remarkably, it’s possible to make a 2.4GHz wireless connection between the two speakers (rather than using the supplied coaxial cable) and still enjoy 24-bit/96kHz high-resolution playback for content incoming via HDMI ARC, digital optical or USB-C.

Anything that’s of a higher native resolution will be downsampled – and it’s worth noting that it’s not at all common for a wireless stereo speaker system at anything like this money to maintain truly high resolution playback when wirelessly connected. Content that’s wirelessly streamed aboard via Bluetooth using the LDAC codec is delivered at 990kbps.

No matter the resolution of the content the FA3 is handling, it gets the benefit of 50 watts of Class D amplification per channel. Philips is claiming a THD (total harmonic distortion) figure of less than 1% – which is, again, pretty impressive in the context of asking price.

There’s no arguing with the way Philips has specified the Fidelio FA3 – it’s packing features that would seem reasonably impressive in a product costing twice as much as this.

Sound Quality

• Energy and drive to spare
• Good scale, great soundstaging
• Leave the EQ presets alone

How do you like your music presented? If your answer is along the lines of at scale, with a lot of very positive drive and attack, then the Fidelio FA3 could well be the affordable wireless stereo speaker system for you.

It doesn’t matter what you listen to – a CD of Zago de Sagazan’s version of Modern Love via the digital optical input, a stream of Distant Sky by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds from Amazon Prime Video using the HDMI socket, or a Bluetooth stream of James Holden’s Common Land using the LDAC codec, the Philips system rolls its sleeves up and piles in.

There’s no doubting the intentions of the FA3 – it intends to serve up music in a confident, direct manner and at a scale that belies the physical dimensions of the cabinets it’s coming from.

It’s a cheerfully dynamic listen, and it creates a large and well-organised soundstage in order to reveal as much detail, both broad and fine, as possible. The 25mm titanium dome tweeter generates bright, crisp and insightful high frequencies that are more than substantial enough to mitigate their tendency to bite.

There’s ample variation in treble sounds, and though the tweeter is quite assertive its brilliance never tips over into glassiness or hardness – even if you like to listen at the bigger volumes the Philips is well capable of operating at.

The handover to the mid/bass driver is smoothly realised, and the midrange is served up with the same judicious attitude towards detail and variation demonstrated at the top end. There’s ample information regarding the tone and timbre of voices made available, and the FA3 can reveal the minutiae of character and attitude just as readily as the equivalent where technique is concerned.

The subtle dynamics of harmonic variation, the over- and undertones around the fundamental, are put into pretty convincing context, and the Philips preserves a sense of singularity and togetherness from the very top end downwards.

At the bottom of the frequency range there’s a notable amount of substance, almost disproportionate to the size of the cabinet and the size of the driver charged with producing it.

For all its presence and confidence, though, the low end is not short of nuance (although it’s fractionally short of solidity) – and the attack and decay of bass sounds is controlled to the point that the Philips has no issue when it comes to naturalistically expressing rhythms and tempos.

Of course, it’s possible to skew the sound in any direction using the EQ presets or the bass and treble dials in the app – but it’s bass that’s most easily affected. Leave well alone (or, specifically, in Balanced mode) and chunky-yet-respectably-rapid low-frequency action can be yours.

There’s plenty of headroom where big dynamic variations in volume and/or intensity are concerned, and the FA3 never sounds in any way stressed or pressured when asked to track them. This facility with the quiet/loud/REALLY LOUD aspects of music is the FA3 in microcosm, actually – it’s an energetic and entertaining listen.

Should you buy it?