They also offer a pretty distinct appearance and lots of customization over your music mix.
Can they challenge thebest earbudsin the business?
Well, not quite… but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
But leave home and the FiiO struggle.
When out and about, I had persistent Bluetooth issues with the FW3.
The buds would lose connection and even turn off for no reason.
Sometimes theyd reconnect with tweaked audio options.
Sometimes they wouldnt turn back on at all.
Think you could drown out background noises with the FW3s admittedly high max volume?
The case is bigger than rival wireless bud charging cases, though its not overwhelmingly huge.
However, it feels cheap in the hand and, most importantly, frail.
I could probably crush it in one hand if I tried.
I found this out the hard way when they conked out on my half way through a journey.
If thats you, youll find these to be decent value buds with some useful features.
The first blemish on the record is that they kept glitching and cutting out during multiple testing periods.
Several times both earbuds would turn off, unprompted, and turn back on again.
Id have to resume music myself.
A few times only one earbud turned off, and would automatically reconnect.
And, before you ask, it wasnt a battery issue, as they had sufficient charges.
Thats a lovely range of features.
Earbuds aficionados will find several common features missing here though.
The main one is active noise cancellation your only way of avoiding background noise is to drown it out.
Another is wear detection, so when you remove the buds, theyll continue to play music.
In terms of battery life, the FiiO FW3 werent really impressive.
The official stat for the case itself is 21 hours, which struggles to hold up to the competition.
Whats that giant case for if not to house a chunky battery?
FiiO FW3 review: Design
The FiiO FW3 are certainly compelling-looking earbuds.
Or should I say com-shell-ing?
Theyre small in-ear buds that you pop right into your ear.
I never had the buds fall out, though vigorous head shaking did threaten to dislodge them.
My advice would be: don’t do that.
Dont wear these in rainy weather or while rolling around on the beach.
Unfortunately, the FW3s case doesnt seem to have had the same design consideration that the buds do.
Thats doubly the case given that these buds wont exactly impress audiophiles if you stick to the default tweaks.
The audio isnt terrible though: its largely on par with what youd expect for headphones at this price.
At least the buds have a nice bustling spec sheet.
Essentially thugh, youll be able to notice a difference when listening to higher-res audio on here.
It’s not wrong, but I might be being unduly positive about some things.
The EQ and touch controls beat out many other similarly priced earbuds I’ve tested.
However, they miss out on a few features that rivals have, which some users might consider mandatory.
Should I buy the FiiO FW3?
If so, it’s possible for you to ignore many of the cons mentioned in this review.
They don’t have touch controls or LDAC support though, unlike the FW3.
And the FiiO FW3 were tested back-to-back with theOnePlus Buds 3, which are priced similarly.
