The M7 is a mix of feature rich, and some features missing – and ultimately your usage will dictate whether there is value in FiiO’s choices. So lets start with some of the obvious ones (we won’t be able to cover everything – but I’ll try and get to most of the main ones).

FM Radio

This is a bit of a miss for me. The settings give you the options of broadcasting regions in Asia, America, Australia, Europe and Japan (this sets the audio bands). I set mine initially to Australia – but reception was awful, so I switched to Asia and it improved. Running the band search from home netted no stations and dialling in manually managed some signals but they were very weak. We are about 6km from central Invercargill, so I tried again from work the next day (we are one block away from some FM transmitters). Reception was better but still not crystal clear. I’ve tried several times since, and sometimes the reception is better – sometimes worse, but its never completely clear. I’ve talked to others and they are faring better in their own part of the world – so I’m assuming this could be simply down to the fact that our reception is pretty poor. I genuinely hope it works better for others – but for me its a miss rather than a hit. While I’m doing the final edits I’ve actually got one relatively clear station – but this is very much an exception rather than a rule.

I used a pair of XTZ Divine, and Blue-tooth pairing was both rapid, and extremely solid (using aptX). I didn’t experience a single glitch in 2 hours of testing the connection. Range was extremely good too – and I was able to get out to 15 metres (and that was with two walls) before having signal drop outs. What’s more – the headset controls also worked perfectly. Likewise with the Q5 – connection was rock solid and range was similar. The final test was with a Trinity Audio lanyard, and this was also pretty good – just a little shorter in range (about 10-12m) and not quite as stable. It has much smaller and older Blue-tooth hardware though and was connecting via the SBC codec rather than aptX (not sure if this contributed to the stability). Once again – the head-set controls all worked perfectly. So two thumbs up for Blue-tooth operation. Unfortunately I was unable to test LDAC.

USB Audio Out

I have a USB C to micro USB cable, so was able to test several of the DAC/amps I have on hand. I had success with the Q5 and Q1ii (as FiiO advertises), and the only time the Q1ii started misbehaving was when its battery started to get low (it dropped the connection and started to pull power from the M7). The E17K also worked beautifully. The devices I tried but could not get working included the Cozoy Takt Pro and Aegis, FiiO K1, and also the LMS HVA. Overall though – the USB audio works for the devices FiiO has advertised, and I guess it will be pot luck with other devices. I did not have an appropriate cable to test OTG. I did test DOP with the Q5, and the M7 was able to send a pure DSD signal to the Q5.

Equaliser

Works as advertised, and if you’ve used FiiO’s 10 band EQ before you’ll be right at home. A nice touch to have easy access with a couple of taps too.

Gapless

Works perfectly with FLAC files. With aac there is a very tiny micro gap – its there but not very noticeable. Overall this gets a pass from me.

Search functionality

Standard Android search functionality is active, and works perfectly. If I search for “Pink” I get tracks with that term in the tile, as well as the artist Pink Floyd and a list of albums. Nice job FiiO.

CTIA functionality (head-sets)

Works brilliantly – and this was with both FiiO’s own earphones/IEMs and also my HD630VB. In fact the HD630VB and M7 combo is one of the best I’ve heard considering the price bracket.

External Playlists

I have an M3U8 playlist for my test tracks, and I use this whenever testing a new DAP. This worked perfectly with the M7, and I had no hiccups loading or playing with it.

Replay Gain!

From their recently released FW update (1.0.3), replay-gain is now working, and working perfectly! Fantastic.

Format Support

I have personally tested MP3, AAC, ALAC, FLAC, APE, AIFF, WAV, OGG and DSD and can confirm they are all working at a variety of resolutions.