Posts Tagged ‘fiio’
FiiO E5 Portable Headphones Amplifier
29, Nov 2008
The Fiio E5 portable headphone amplifier is probably the world’s smallest headphone amplifier that is designed to improve not only the volume, but also the sound quality of almost any digital audio player such as a MP3 or MP4 Player, Mobile Phone, Laptop, or just about any other portable music device, it can also work on Ninja headphones if you’re a gamer. It is an upgraded model of the Fiio E3 Headphone Amplifier which is already very popular around the world because of it’s great results and very affordable price. And the best of all is that the new E5 not only retains all the features of the E3, but also manages to improve on all the drawbacks that the previous model had. So if you want to use a higher quality headphones with your portable music device than the ones you got it with you probably have to check out the Fiio E5 and the benefits that this portable and inexpensive device can provide in order to boost the volume and improve the bass performance…
The Fiio E5 portable headphones amplifier comes in a very small case that has a clip on it’s back so you can easily attach it to your belt for instance. Actually the form and the size of the device are quite similar to the iPod shuffle music player, but the functionality of the two devices is totally different. The E5 comes with a volume control, an integrated USB-rechargeable lithium-ion battery and a switch which will stop or activate the Bass Boost functionality of the device, features that were lacking in the previous E3 version. But Fiio E5 is more than just an upgraded version of the E3 headphones amplifier, it has a higher power output, better Signal to Noise ratio and Lower Distortion. The E5 also uses the new TI (Textas Instruments) headphone amp solution in order to have better sound quality to make it work better with high impedance headphone.
The Fiio E5 portable headphone amplifier is designed to work with headphones with impedance raging form 16 Ohms to 300 Ohms, providing up to 150 mW with 16 Ohm headphones and going down to 12 mW with 300 Ohms headphones. The Signal to Noise Ratio is at least 95 dB and distortion of less than 0.009% (10 mW). The Fiio E5 uses TI OPA2338UA as a pre-amp and TI TPA6130A as a power amplifier which give quite good results, especially having in mind the low price and the small size of the device. The built-in 200mAh rechargeable battery should be good for about 20 hours playtime at normal volume after that you’ll just have to plug it in a free USB port for a bit…
The FiiO E5 is currently available with a price of about $20 USD.
