FiiO M11PRO Lossless Portable Music Player – The new flagship

Once again, the Chinese company is expanding its offering in the field of portable hi-fi audio players, building on the recently launched FiiO M11 Smart Lossless Playback Portable Music Player to introduce the FiiO M11PRO Lossless Portable Music Player as its new flagship product.

Barely a few weeks ago, Chinese personal audio device specialist FiiO Electronics Technology Co Ltd. unveiled a new portable Hi-res player in the FiiO M Range, the FiiO M11 Smart Lossless Playback Portable Music Player. This was clearly considered the flagship of this product range, the outstanding feature of which is that it is built on a platform directly derived from the development of smartphones, offering high integration with very good performance and yet low power consumption, thus providing long battery life.

However, it appears that FiiO Electronics Technology Co Ltd. has decided to present another solution in the FiiO M range, which takes the FiiO M11 Smart Lossless Playback Portable Music Player to the next level, above and beyond the FiiO M11 Smart Lossless Playback Portable Music Player, to become the actual flagship of the range. However, instead of increasing the numbers in the product description to 12, 13 or 14, the product name alone expresses the direct “relationship” to the FiiO M11 Smart Lossless Playback Portable Music Player and refers to the new member of the family as the FiiO M11PRO Lossless Portable Music Player.

The technological basis of the new FiiO M11PRO Lossless Portable Music Player largely corresponds to that of its “little” brother, the FiiO M11 Smart Lossless Playback Portable Music Player, and the interfaces it offers are also familiar from the “little one”. The most striking difference is in the D/A converter’s equipment, which also has an output stage built around a THX AAA, a more powerful battery, and more memory.

Thus, the new FiiO M11PRO Lossless Portable Music Player also uses the Samsung Exynos 7872 platform, whereby one must correctly speak of a Samsung Exynos 7872 Hexa-core SoC, which is manufactured in the 14 nm process and is clocked at 2 GHz. This platform is, as already mentioned before, characterized by a high level of integration with very good performance and low power consumption. It is a platform that was primarily developed for smartphones and thus appears to be the perfect basis for portable hi-res players with the flexibility required here.

Equipped with 3 GByte RAM and 64 GByte ROM instead of the 32 GByte of its little brother, Google Android 7.0 is once again used as the operating system, which on the one hand forms the platform for the actual Hi-res audio player app – FiiO Music App – but also ensures that various apps can be used directly for different streaming offers. This makes services such as Spotify, Deezer, TIDAL, Qobuz, Apple Music, Google Play and many, many more available.

For your own media content, the FiiO M11PRO Lossless Portable Music Player is equipped with two microSD Card Slots, whereby storage media with up to 2 TByte can be used, resulting in a total storage capacity of up to 4 TByte.

The FiiO M11PRO Lossless Portable Music Player features an 18:9 TFT display with a remarkable 720 x 1,440 pixels and a 5.15 inch screen diagonal. This also supports extensive gesture control, the manufacturer speaks of Full Screen Gesture Operation, so that operation should be particularly intuitive.

For connection to the outside world, WiFi is available first and foremost, whereby the technological basis of the FiiO M11PRO Lossless Portable Music Player naturally offers WiFi of the latest design for the highest data rates. The player is certified for Hi-res Wireless Audio. Besides UPnP with dlna certification, the FiiO M11PRO Lossless Portable Music Player supports Apple AirPlay.

The FiiO M11PRO Lossless Portable Music Player also features Bluetooth 4.2, supporting all relevant standards from SBC, AAC, aptX, aptX LL, aptX HD to LDAC and LHDC. If the FiiO M11PRO Lossless Portable Music Player functions as a receiver, the codecs SBC and LDAC are supported.

The FiiO M11PRO Lossless Portable Music Player supports FiiO Link via Bluetooth and WiFi, which is very convenient as it allows you to control playback directly from your smartphone using an app, while keeping the hi-res player in your backpack or pocket.

If you rely on a cable, you’ll find a USB-C port on the FiiO M11PRO Lossless Portable Music Player, whereby this can also be used as a USB DAC in addition to pure “data exchange” and is of course also used to charge the battery. More about this in a moment.

As described above, the most significant difference between the FiiO M11 Smart Lossless Playback Portable Music Player and the new FiiO M11PRO Lossless Portable Music Player is the DAC. The new FiiO M11PRO Lossless Portable Music Player uses an AKM AK4497EQ DAC, and this in a double version, as the complete signal processing structure is balanced. The manufacturer refers to this as True Balance Architecture, which of course extends to the output stage.

The new FiiO M11PRO Lossless Portable Music Player is equipped with THX AAA, a so-called THX Achromatic Audio Amplifier. THX Ltd. speaks of the best amplifier technology currently available for headphones and describes it as a solution without compromise. Among other things, it uses a so-called feed-forward error correction topology to eliminate any distortion. In addition, this technology should be characterized by very low power consumption and at the same time very high output power for the reproduction of even high dynamics.

The FiiO M11PRO Lossless Portable Music Player naturally offers an unbalanced 3.5 mm stereo mini jack connector as well as balanced connectors, designed as a 2.5 mm 4-pin jack as well as a 4.4 mm 4-pin jack. This ensures that any headphones can be connected in the best possible way. After all, at the unbalanced connection 195 mW at 32 Ohm impedance is available, at the balanced connections it is even 550 mW at 32 Ohm impedance. This means that even the most demanding headphones can be used without any problems. The manufacturer speaks of this connection variety of Infinity Sound.

To complete the list of connections, it should be mentioned that a coaxial S/PDIF is also available here.

The FiiO M11PRO Lossless Portable Music Player is able to process signals in Linear PCM with up to 32 bits and 384 kHz, and it also understands the playback of content in DSD with up to DSD256, natively. This is of course also true when using the FiiO M11PRO Lossless Portable Music Player as a USB DAC, whereby asynchronous data transfer is naturally used.

It’s also interesting that the FiiO M11PRO Lossless Portable Music Player allows the conversion to DSD, which should lead to an even better sound quality.

The FiiO M11PRO Lossless Portable Music Player’s integrated battery, a lithium polymer battery with 4,370 mAh, guarantees a playing time of up to 16 hours. Via Qualcomm QC 2.0 (Quick Charging) or MTK PE (Pump Express by MediaTek), this battery should be fully charged within three and a half hours. In standby, the player should be available charged for no less than 60 days.

Of course, the new FiiO M11PRO Lossless Portable Music Player also presents itself with an extremely elegant housing made of aluminum, with a cover made of carbon fiber-reinforced PET on the back. In principle, the front takes up the entire display, which is provided with a special coating and is thus especially protected from possible damage, such as scratches. In addition to the display, a side rotary encoder is available, and a few buttons are also available for direct playback control.

The FiiO M11PRO Lossless Portable Music Player measures 130 mm in length, 70.5 mm in width, and 16.5 mm in thickness. This means it weighs no more than 220 g.

As NT-Global Distribution GmbH announced, the new FiiO M11PRO Lossless Portable Music Player is now available at specialist retailers. Once again, the price called for this solution is astonishing. Despite the impressive technical data, the new FiiO M11PRO Lossless Portable Music Player does not require a budget of more than € 699,-.

Getting to the point

The technological basis of the new FiiO M11PRO Lossless Portable Music Player largely corresponds to that of its “little” brother, the FiiO M11 Smart Lossless Playback Portable Music Player, and the interfaces it offers are also familiar from the “little one”. The most striking difference is in the D/A converter’s equipment, which also has an output stage built around a THX AAA, a more powerful battery, and more memory.