FiiO M3K Portable High Resolution Music Player - Black

This M3K is an amazing little device!I'm a near-audiophile with a large CD and vinyl music collection. At home I usually listen to music on LP, with my reliable (although far from perfect) ATH-M50x headphones and vintage phono amp, on a clean Technics SL-1500 that’s equipped with a properly calibrated Nagaoka cartridge. I also like to take long walks and drives though, so when I’m on the move I carry a dedicated music player that is stuffed with mp3s that I’ve carefully converted and tagged by myself from the original CDs and lossless audio files. (The mp3s on sites like Amazon Music are usually too low quality/low bitrate so I don't even bother with them.)About a year ago, I decided that I wanted to upgrade from my old 8gb iPod to a portable audio player that could hold more of my digital music collection. I searched through Amazon products and reviews, looking for a lightweight and inexpensive player that held at least 32gb (or could use a micro SD card), had physical control buttons (at least for play, pause, skip, volume, etc.), and had a battery that could play for at least 24 hours. I wanted to use a set of wired earphones I own, so I didn't care about Wi-Fi or Bluetooth capabilities.My first purchase was a failure. Amazon is full of similar-looking, unknown-brand, thin rectangular mp3 players that sell around $20 to $40 and, bizarrely, have great customer ratings. I bought one. The interface was slow and glitchy and the device kept crashing. On top of that, when it did work, the sound quality was laughably bad. I quickly returned it.I spent a few more days researching and eventually tried again with this FiiO M3K. It took a while to find because it didn't immediately show up in the recommended product results for mp3 players, unlike the low quality devices that are so heavily promoted here. The M3K was a little more expensive than the first bad player I had tried, but was still only 1/4 the original cost of the iPod I was replacing, so I figured it was worth the gamble.I was immediately impressed with the M3K. Using my usual earphones, the sound quality was much, much clearer and fuller than the other player I tried. I also compared the M3K with my smartphone and old iPod, using the exact same music files and earphones, and the FiiO blew them both away too. Of course it isn’t as good as listening to records at home, but this easily sounds better than any portable music player I've ever owned -- cassette, CD, minidisc, or mp3.The M3K has no internal storage, but its single micro SD card slot is more than enough for me. I started with a 128gb card, then when that filled up upgraded to 256gb, and currently have a 512gb card in the device. At the moment, I have about 2,500 album folders with over 28,000 files on the card (all mp3s at V0 or 320 kbps) and still have 200gb of unused space.The product description says that the M3K can use up to a 2tb card, but the product name says it only goes up to 512gb. I'm not sure which is the true limit, but I can confirm that it plays a 512gb card flawlessly. A lot of cheaper mp3 players also have a limit of how many files they can hold (usually several thousand). As far as I can tell, the M3K does not have a limit to the number of files it can recognize.The device does have a few shortcomings. The interface is functional, but somewhat limited. Searching for albums or artists requires a little patience. There is no radio, and no audio out via USB. It does support song-to-song random shuffle within single folders or within the entire music library, but does not have an album shuffle function to play complete albums from start to finish in random order. (I really wish FiiO would add this in a firmware update!)It is very easy to transfer files -- just connect it to computer via USB cable and drag and drop -- and you can organize the folders any way you want, but each time you add new files to the card, you have to update the media library for the device to recognize them. With over 28,000 mp3s, that process takes me about 20 minutes. Every once in a while, the library update will fail part way through and I have to start the scan over again, but it usually works fine. In thousands of hours of play time, the M3K has only glitched or frozen between songs a couple of times, and it was easy to reboot and get working again.Overall it isn't perfect, but it is an excellent player that exceeded my expectations. Based on performance and functionality alone, I would rate the Fii0 M3K four stars. The reason I'm giving it five stars is that, after using it for a year, it is still by far the best music player near this price that I've found. I enjoyed using it so much that I started looking for an even better portable music player to upgrade to, but I still can't find anything as good as the M3K. FiiO and other brands do have models with some better capabilities (like the X3 or M7), but they either have a smaller SD card size limit, a much weaker battery, or no physical buttons, and they all cost more. The similar M3 Pro, for example, costs nearly twice as much as the M3K but only has a 15 hour battery life.If FiiO or another company releases a new audio player with all of the M3K's audio quality, file compatibility, functions, and buttons plus dual memory card support, a couple of gb of internal memory, headphone and line audio jacks, USB audio, a better or customizable interface with album shuffle, an FM radio, and a 30 hour or longer battery life, all for less than $200 or so, I’ll consider upgrading again. But I do not expect to find anything better in the near future. I'm very satisfied with the M3K!

I looked at a lot of mp3 players in this price range before I decided to get this one. The 4-star score I'm giving means I'm happy with the purchase. It seems hard to find a player without big flaws. I was mainly looking to replace the Iriver H10 I had years ago.It's pretty annoying that the MP3 player market seems pretty dead at first glance, just these cheap tiny players with crap controls/screens that seem to inevitably go out of production to be replaced by lesser models, the older used ones then selling for inflated prices. I spent a lot of time looking at the Sansa Clip players and the legendary Fuze, but I got sick of seeing the good models only sold second-hand, and the makers seeming to worsen every new model. Before buying this, I was going to buy the Sansa Fuze+ because it seemed to have everything: Good sound quality, non-proprietary connection. But I canceled after reading about how awful the touch controls on it are. It seemed to me that the MP3 player market was truly doomed since smartphones came around.That's because somehow I wasn't seeing some of the good players in my amazon results. At some point, I saw this player on Youtube and googled it, leading me to this Amazon page, where it has decent reviews. Hmm, why didn't I ever see it in my own filtered searches?This actually is just what I wanted. It doesn't have the awful, unintuitive interface of the really cheap players. If you want a good inexpensive player, I would consider this.The interface is good (but can't be rockbox'd), the sound quality is great, it can do folders or tags organization, the screen shows a lot, and album art looks good, battery life is good, file transfers go well. The company actually seems interested in improving it with firmware and not abandoning it. It doesn't feel cheap, and it comes with a silicone body cover. It feels reassuring after using some of the cheaper players.The interface is also straightforward and responsive, unlike the cheaper players I've used.But problems can be found with the interface. While the touch scrolling is usable, there isn't any sensitivity option in the current firmware, and it does have a bit of a tendency to overshoot. Since the sensitivity is such that swiping 1/4 or 1/3 of the pad can move through all of the main menu screen options, it seems like some sensitivity could be removed there, and makes you start to dislike that there are 5 options there and you miss the option you're going for because it is too sensitive.Following from that, they could reduce and re-arrange the main menu to make it quicker to operate. For instance, there are 5 icons, 'file browser', 'record', 'category', 'play settings', and 'general settings', in that order. The two 'settings' icons could be combined into one, and there would be one less option there. Trying to get to 'category' when you wanted to should be made easier. It's not great that category is in the middle, because you can overshoot it, and there is a structure level within in that requires another precise touch movement. By comparison, for me (using folders to organize) it is not bad, because the folder browser is all the way at one end, so there is no way to overshoot, and in that browser, the cursor automatically is on my 'music' folder, so I just swipe, click, click. Easy. If you use tags instead, you have to move the cursor to the 'category', then in there you have to move the cursor down 1 place to 'Artists', click, and then you are in your artists. That's 2 chances to overshoot and get frustrated every time you want to go back into your music.Honestly, I would prefer it if it let you put 'Artist' on the main menu and removed one layer altogether.I do have a somewhat significant gripe about the folder browser, it does take over 20 seconds to scroll through about 200 folders. There is a button for scrolling, so you don't have to swipe with your thumb, but I wish the scroll buttons were like page up/page down buttons. It would be a hassle while driving or exercising.Youtube video reviews have noted that the external buttons do different things at different times, and require you to be on the "now playing" screen to work as play/pause for instance. This hasn't been a huge issue for me, yet. But it's a bit confusing. You can go back to the 'now playing' screen by hitting return all the way to the main menu, and then again. If you press return again, it will keep cycling through.As for the equalizer, some have said it doesn't work, but it does. It just takes a few seconds to change. For some reason, all of the presets are quieter than standard. There is no custom EQ function (Edit: now there is!).I do hope they improve the firmware, but, the touch controls are usable and not super-annoying like the Fuze+ is said to be.But even with all of that, I am still happy with this as a player for my car or camping or whatever. It is so much easier to use and more reliable than the super-cheap players I've tried. It seems about as good as my old Iriver H10.Pros:robust build + comes with silicone covergreat sound qualityinterface is relatively straightforward with no lagnice size, colorful screengood battery lifeEQ works, including customeasy file transfers, and player is capable of ordering files alphabetically on the device.non-proprietary charging and connection portCons:no touchpad sensitivity settingmenu and category structure is a little unoptimizedexternal controls change based on what screen you are on.