Introduction

If you are like me and wondering how FiiO has been putting out so many new products in the last few months, then perhaps knowing that the brand has a new industrial park all to itself would help explain it. Indeed, this 15000 m² area with a dedicated marketing center alone makes FiiO no more a small Asian audio brand in my eyes, rather competing with the bigger brands globally. This has led to new product lines in the form of desktop streamers, wired headphones, and even speakers we will talk about separately. Amidst all these, FiiO also introduced a new TWS set last year—which received a nice LDAC firmware update the week I write this review too—and followed it up with a more budget-friendly version this month.


Today we examine the FiiO FW3 and FW5 TWS sets, with the latter having released last year. These are not FiiO's first TWS sets though, with the single DD JadeAudio EW1 released in 2019 and the single BA FW1 in 2021. Both were on the budget-friendly side and arguably never made much of a splash. This led to R&D into TWS earhook accessories such as the popular UTWS5 that allowed for wired IEMs to be used wirelessly. The knowledge gained in the making of these led to the new FW5 that now integrates a standalone DAC inside and uses a 1 DD/2 BA hybrid driver configuration and updated Qualcomm SoC. The FW3 cuts things down to a new single DD but retains the independent DAC and amplifier circuit. Thanks to FiiO for providing review samples to TechPowerUp and let's begin with a look at the product specifications in the images below. Be sure to click them twice to more easily view the various parameters.

Specifications

FiiO FW3

FiiO FW5