FiiO EM5 Review

FiiO EM5

Packaging and presentation

Out of the box, the EM5 certainly starts-off with a good impression, appearing every bit as premium as its $299 price tag would suggest in its smart, matte-black retail packaging. Sliding-off the outer layer, a hinged box then opens up to reveal the EM5 sitting smartly in flush, recessed foam giving off a sense of drama that seems a little bit comical given their tiny, plastic construction. FiiO’s quick start guide for the EM5 sits below this top layer of foam, and a very generous range of accessories indeed presents themselves after you lift out the documentation. FiiO provides a nice, high-quality leather-like clamshell carrying box to store your EM5 in. It’s not exactly ‘pocketable’, but it’s a nice desktop keep-sake and certainly welcome at this price.

FiiO EM5

FiiO EM5

Three small boxes of foam ear-tip filters are also provided, each packing six pairs of thin foam covers designed to stretch over the faceplate of the flat driver heads. The ear-tips are broken into three options: ‘Bass’, ‘Balanced’, and ‘Crisp’ – the latter having a round cut-out on the front of the foam to expose a section of the driver and provide less mechanical impedance. The foam is tricky to get onto the glossy resin of the EM5 shells, and it took way longer to get on at one point then I care to admit. Lastly, two right-angled detachable jacks are included to swap-out for your termination of choice. More on this later.

FiiO EM5

FiiO EM5

Comfort and user experience. 

The main bodies of the EM5’s shells are 3D-printed from a glossy resin, which FiiO explains is medical grade and designed to be comfortable on your skin. Now, because earbuds don’t have the benefit of having a soft silicone or foam tip to sit gently in your ear and conform to its natural shape, they can get pretty uncomfortable – depending on the way your ear is shaped. True to the marketing material, the plastic body is pretty soft to the touch and feels nice both in the hand, and sitting gently in the concha part of your outer ear. 

FiiO EM5

FiiO EM5

The shells are a smokey translucent colour, allowing you to peek inside at the EM5’s wiring as well as the bass chamber that gives it its unique look. They’re pretty utilitarian-looking earphones and aren’t about to win any beauty pageants, but they do remind me a little bit of the face-hugging aliens from the (forgettable) Alien spin-off film Prometheus, for some reason.

FiiO EM5

FiiO EM5

Let’s talk about comfort, because it’s what I was concerned about and I’m sure you’re wondering what it’s like on the EM5 as well. The EM5 is designed to be worn with the cable straight-down, rather than over/around the top of the ear like on many audiophile IEMs. This is actually my preferred way to wear in-ear headphones, so this is a big tick for me. My daily outdoor headphones – my Grado GR10 – are designed to be worn in this fashion, and I find this form-factor simply less fussy, easier to wear, and makes me more inclined to listen to music. Because the drivers of the EM5 rest in your outer ear rather than insert into your inner ear, they are very easily pulled out of place. The EM5 is designed to be worn with either of the three varieties of supplied foam tips in place, which do help create sufficient friction to hold them in place for most around-the-house activities, but you certainly won’t be doing any vigorous exercise with the EM5. Gym-buddies they ain’t.

As for isolation…well you can forget about that. The EM5 is basically an open-air experience, so you can expect to literally hear everything in your surroundings while wearing them. This might seem like a big ‘minus’ if you’re judging them in strict IEM terms, but I’m guessing that like me you might be more than OK with the idea of open-back headphones for home listening, and that’s probably the aptest comparison I can make. They’re as open, say, as wearing a pair of Grado SR80 or a Sennheiser HD600 if you’ve had the chance to try either (or their nearest family relatives). Conversely, the EM5 also does tend to leak a little sound outwards as well. It’s audible in a quiet room in a 2-metre radius, but it’s probably not noticeable under your average office circumstances. And that is precisely where the EM5 could be a fantastic listening option – in the office. The EM5 provides a discrete, portable format that’s easy to pack, throw on and pull-out, and provides plenty of ‘spatial awareness’ as to what’s going on around you.

I actually find the edges of the EM5’s flat driver faceplate a little uncomfortable after a couple of hours of listening – they do require a bit of adjustment from time to time in my smaller-than-average ears, but they’re generally pretty easy and breezy to live with. You can just pop them in and off you go – there’s no wrangling with wires or having to maneuver them around your ears. Glasses-wearers take note – the EM5 is super convenient for listening-to while you wear specs or shades thanks to its cable layout. 

FiiO EM5

FiiO EM5

Speaking of the cable, the EM5’s cable is absolutely superb. The 1.2m cable is made from rubber-coated silver, and is braided below the Y-splitter but has a single twisted strand reaching each of the drivers. 1.2 metres is perfectly wieldy for portable use and plausible in a pinch for desktop use as well. It feels high quality, it’s tangle resistant, it’s non-microphonic, and it’s lightweight…which is all lucky because it’s also permanently attached. You might be scratching your head wondering why FiiO went to the trouble of creating a new termination swap-out system rather than providing additional cables, but it’s actually rather brilliant and I genuinely hope to see this system used on more earphones down the track. You twist the bezel above the right-angle connector from ‘OFF’ to ‘ON’, and simply pull-off the termination and pop-on the one you need to use. 3.5mm single-ended and 2.5mm balanced pretty much cover the board for my portable use-cases, but the addition of 4.4mm Pentaconn balanced by FiiO is most welcome and a sign that this format is becoming more widely adopted throughout the industry.

Head over to page 3 to hear about the EM5’s sound quality.

4.4/5 - (46 votes)
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Hailing from Sydney's eastern beaches, Matty runs his own beer business, 'Bowlo Draught', as well as working in creative advertising. When he's not enjoying his hifi and vinyl collection at home, he can probably be found rolling-up on the green at his beloved Bondi Bowling Club.

1 Comment

  • Reply September 28, 2020

    Jeff

    I’ve been using the Yuin PK3 for gym duty and casual listening for years. At about $28, they’re the best bang for buck earbud I’ve heard. They also fit in my ear the best due to their smaller size.

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