FiiO S15

FiiO's streamer looks tempting on paper, but disappoints in use

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We know FiiO best for its feature-laden personal music players and affordable digital-to-analogue converters. But, as we take a look at the company's website, the sheer breadth of its product range is astonishing. You'll find countless headphones of all types alongside active speakers, desktop audio products, cables and even a portable cassette deck. Record player? Yes, FiiO makes one of those, too.

Clearly, this is an ambitious and adventurous company. So when it launches its first full-size music streamer, we can't wait to have a listen. FiiO refers to the S15 as a 'desktop hires audio streamer', but we aren't sure what that actually means. In the metal, it is a standard, full-width 43cm unit, the same as any conventional hi-fi product, and there isn't anything in the feature set that screams out dedicated desktop audio use to us. The S15 doesn't even have a headphone output to suit that purpose.

What we have here is a generally well-equipped but fairly conventional music streamer - and as such, it does everything you would expect from such a unit. The S15 will play music files from servers attached to your home network or any memory storage connected directly into its USB-A socket. As expected, it can connect to your home network either wired or wirelessly.

The S15's operating system is based on Android 12, and as such, it is possible to download any appropriate app from the Google Play Store. Our review sample didn’t have either Tidal or Qobuz loaded straight out of the box, but it was the work of minutes to get them downloaded and functioning. The use of Android undoubtedly gives the FiiO a great deal of versatility compared with most conventional rivals, but its inclusion brings about some usability issues, too.