Yesterday I was looking at the FiiO x5 iii at b$h - great price and feature set but it has a ton of negative reviews on amazon so I passed. It was on sale for $180 or so.

What other players should I consider in $200 price range.

I want:
Plays lots of different formats
Good battery life
Variety of outputs
Good sound
Ability to take micro sd cards

Thank you

The x5 is a good player. Great reviews on head-fi. The x3 and x1 are good also. Depends on what you need. Hit me up if you need to talk audio and players. Been doing reviews on them since 05.

@tarheel7734

I’m sent

I have a Fiio X5 as well, haven't had any major issues.  Are the reviews slamming the product or the store/shipper?
TBH I don't use it as much as I thought I would.

Lots of issues, software updates , freezing up etc.  3.1/5 on amazon.

You must be looking at the Gen3 one.  I have the Gen2 which doesn't have the android/wifi bullshit.

Well, I received the m9 today.

I’m having a few challenges but I’m liking it so far.
Was at work and did software update via WiFi no problem.

I wasn’t able to find in the device how to format a sd card so I just ran with what ever format was on a older sd card and it worked.  My large SD card is on back order.

I couldn’t get a blue tooth speaker to pair up - just numbers showed up on the m9 - no device description that I’m used to.  Not sure what issue is but perhaps type of BT.

Cheesey head phones I tried worked fine.

I dragged and dropped some albums in wav format onto the card and they played!

Using the file menu I could select songs and such but album titles and artists names didn’t go in to the app categories.

The files were huge (wav) so I need to figure figure how to go to a more compact format.

I selected line out and plugged in a cheesy cable into my Tacoma’s line in.  I was pretty impressed!  Sound was pretty good.

Need now:
Better cable.
Software to convert files.
Large micro SD cards.
Time!

Thank you