Excellent product as I am not an audiophile but it was easy to use solved my purpose and very compact in size

It’s been amazing so far. I use my iPhone 11 and Astell & Kern Billie Jean with Q3 and the experience has been nothing short of awesome. Apple Music Hi-Res Lossless plays like a charm with this setup and Q3 is able to get the best from Apple Music at 24bit 192kHz.

With regard to power, this device can drive most headphones to a decent volume without a problem (provided the headphones don't exceed an impedance of 300 Ω). The sound quality is great; I'd say the sound is very neutral and would pair well with a wide range of headphones, be they warm-sounding or bright-sounding. The Q3 is ideal for laptop users who travel often or even just move around in their homes a lot. The battery life is pretty great for what it is, but won't last an entire day of usage (which is fine really, given that most other portable DAC/Amps in this range have worse battery life). Here are some of my gripes. It's a little too unwieldy to use with phones. The binding straps they provide in the box make no sense cause phones don't have thick bezels to wrap those straps around anymore and you'd be covering a sizable portion of your screen; also, they look hideous. You need to think of a workaround if you really need to strap the Q3 to your phone. The volume knob isn't as smooth as I'd like it to be. It isn't terrible by any means, but I expected a better rotation mechanism for the price. Speaking of price, I got it for 12,990 INR; it immediately dropped to 11,900 during the Christmas sale, and it's still at that price point right now. I feel kinda shafted, but hey, that's just my bad timing lol.

All in all, this is a great DAC/Amp for laptop use, but you're gonna need to find a better way to carry it around with your phone. Another important thing to note is the Q3's lack of bluetooth. I don't really care much for bluetooth and if you're in the same boat, get these instead of the BTR5 (if you're willing to cough up the extra dough, that is); it's more powerful and has better battery life. But if you find yourself using bluetooth at all for the sake of convenience, you should definitely get the BTR5 instead.

FiiO - Q3

Not an audiophile but realized what a soundstage is after using this. The build is metal and feels rock solid. Comes pre-charged to about 70 or 80% I think. Always a good sign. An extremely easy setup for anyone. Just plug in and be blown away. Do use a good service like Spotify or others which provide high quality music. You could use it for the usual YouTube songs, but I wouldn't recommend it. Not sure if YouTube music is similar to Spotify or Apple Music. Do try it out. Got it for a good deal during the Christmas Sale. Thanks Varun for the suggestion and HeadphoneZone for the brilliant service and catering to a niche.

First of all, the design of the Q3 is excellent. I really love the small thin and slim form factor and good built quality. Problem or should I say inconvenience is to carry along in the pocket because of the whole USB connections and rubber bans strapping with the phone and so on. It is not as easy or simple as using Fiio's own BTR5 which is a Bluetooth portable DAC Amp at a similarly or slightly lesser price then Fiio Q3. The big question is does the Q3 sound better than BTR5? My answer is Yes, but not by a huge margin as I had imagined from other website reviews.

Fiio Q3 has an AKM DAC chip which produce a much balanced, cleaner softer and nice smoother sound signature of AKM DAC chips. The THX certified amp enable Q3 to even better enhance the clarity and neutral sound with excellent low noise floor for IEMs. I absolutely love and enjoy the combination of both the techs and I have been a huge fan of AKM DAC sound signature (which was the main reason I bought the Fiio Q3). On the other hand, BTR5 have a ESS sabre DAC chip which produce a brighter and slightly mid forward sound signature. BTR5 also lacks in terms of sound clarity as the THX amp on Q3 is far better than the amp in BTR5. But at the same time BTR5 has more features and easier to just carry along. It has Bluetooth or NFC feature which can connect to mobile phone or portable music player much more conveniently whereas the Q3 is just a normal DAC amp and you need USB cables to connect to music devices. One can still enjoy HiFi music over Bluetooth on BTR5 as it has LDAC support up to 96khz HiFi music on the go. The battery performance from both devices is almost similar (around 8-9hrs) with IEMs at average listening volumes. Both devices can now support apple lossless music on apple iOS device via USB C or lightning cable. And finally, BTR5 cost lesser by 1k-1.5k (depending on offers) than the Q3 which basically has fewer features of portability.

I enjoy both the devices from Fiio and I am happy to choose either Q3 or BTR5 depending on the occasion; for home and office use I go for Q3 or if I am travelling, I go for BTR5. So, yes, I recommend either one of them to anyone who are interested or looking for a portable DAC amp.

Personally I’m not happy with the product as such.
1. At high volumes (>70%) significant distortion, which I never expected. At least from past 10 years I haven’t heard any device creating distortion at high volumes.
I use iPhone 12 mini and iPad with Bose speakers to experience best out of it. But not happy.
2. Cables provided are extremely disappointing in terms of length. I can’t use C to lighting connector which is provided with my iPhone which has better length. Customer support team is saying cable provided with my iPhone device doesn’t support.
3. Even 3.5mm cable is of same length.
4. FIIO customer support is pathetic. They don’t even attend the calls.
If we have any law definitely I will file complaint against FIIO on multiple aspects.