Our favorite budget audiophile brand just unveiled beautiful walnut closed-back headphones with 60mm drivers, for a fantastic price
FiiO’s new wired headphones promise spectacular sound for a surprisingly low price
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We’re big fans of FiiO gear – we gave theFiiO FT5over-ears the full five stars in our review, theFiiO FT3are among our picks for thebest wired headphones, andFiiO M11Stops our list of thebest hi-res music players. But while the FiiO FT3 headphones arecomparativelyaffordable for audiophile cans, they’re still quite expensive at just under $300 / £300 / AU$450.
So we’re quite excited by the brand-new FiiO FT1 headphones, which promise headphone heaven for considerably less cash: they’re half the price of the FT3 at just $159 / £139 (roughly AU$270). They’re also closed-back, which means they’ll isolate you from sound better, and can be used in noisier environments.
The FiiO FT1 headphones don’t look budget. They have real American Black Walnut wooden ear cups, and that wood isn’t just decorative: it’s very dense, and that means it can reduce cavity resonance and minimize standing waves to deliver a more accurate sound, FiiO assures us. And the spec sheet suggests that these headphones are beautiful on the inside too.
FiiO FT1: key features and price
The FT1 headphones feature a newly developed 60mm dynamic driver, which is significantly bigger than the drivers you usually find in thebest over-ear headphones(theSony WH-1000XM5have 30mm drivers, theBose QuietComfort Ultra Headphoneshave 40mm drivers, for comparison). It’s designed to deliver much deeper bass, while the suspension gasket is made from light PU plastic for low-frequency elasticity and strength, apparently.
FiiO hasn’t neglected the top frequencies. There’s a specially imported Japanese ultra-fine CCAW (Copper Clad Aluminum Wire) voice coil made from wire cores 0.035mm thick, which is as thin as a human hair. FiiO says the voice coil delivers a “purer, more comfortable sound”.
The FT1’s diaphragm is made primarily from wood paper fibers made from 90-year-old European spruce, a wood that’s often used in musical instruments because of its tonal qualities. FiiO says that it soaks it, cooks it and beats it to create a particular kind of pulp, adding carbon fiber to deliver the acoustic toughness it wants. FiiO then cooks it again before moulding it to a thickness of just 0.1mm.
There’s more: a U-shaped acoustic damping tube to enhance passive noise attenuation and to reduce the cavity resonance frequency; conical baffle plates to minimize high-frequency attenuation; a 392-wire silver plated, oxygen free cable; breathable mesh fabric earpads; and a three-axis adaptive headband for snug fitting without excessive audio leakage.
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Considering the specs you’d expect these headphones to be pricey, so they seem extremely aggressive at £139 / $159. If they sound as good as they look, the FT1 could be up there with some of thebest headphonesavailable today. They’re available to buy now.
Writer, broadcaster, musician and kitchen gadget obsessive Carrie Marshall has been writing about tech since 1998, contributing sage advice and odd opinions to all kinds of magazines and websites as well as writing more than a dozen books. Her memoir,Carrie Kills A Man, is on sale now and her next book, about pop music, is out in 2025. She is the singer in Glaswegian rock bandUnquiet Mind.
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