I had purchased two Fiio Q5 units in the past and had horrible difficulty with both units. Both of them ended being returned. I decided to give the Q5s a try with the new THX amp module and am happy to report it appears Fiio got their act together with this unit. Everything works perfectly and with complete ease so far.
Nice, glad you enjoy it 
It’s got a lot of capability for the price, very solid unit
Awesome!
Would love to hear your thoughts on power and sound, I have been eyeing this as my first portable to save up for.
Thanks M0N! I was very hesitant to give the Q5 another shot but I’m glad I did.
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I use the Monoprice THX portable at work and I love that unit but it doesn’t have bluetooth. I wanted a wireless solution to connect to my smart TV so I could enjoy my headphones while watching movies away from my computer.
The previous Q5 units I had would connect to devices through bluetooth but would not recognize wired connections either directly into a computer or smartphone with the included connectors. So the firmware could not be updated. I’m pleased to report this unit has no issues. It also sounds very similar to my desktop dac/amp. It has more than enough juice to power all of my headphones. I usually set the gain at 1:00 on low gain with the bass boost off. I’m also using the balanced output.
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Nice, how does the THX module compare to the stock AM3E module?
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Yeah the Q5s is pretty sweet, use mine everyday at work, I love it.
Its sounds a bit more THX’y. 
I don’t have a Q5 to directly compare against, but I can say this sounds every bit as good as my SMSL + THX AAA 789. My bottom line is that the unit actually works as advertised now!
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That’s good to hear. I have the q5s with the am3e and I enjoy it as well. Noise floor is quiet/nothing and things sound as they should. Kinda wish I woulda went with the thx module but I can’t imagine a huge difference.
The thx module is a bit better but imo not worth it, the stock one is already pretty good on its own
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Heard from some they discontinued the thx module. Not sure if it’s true but I can’t find it anywhere.
I bought a Q5s but the windows reads it as q5 only without the S
is it normal ?? how can i diffrentiate between the two ??
Mine says the same thing in Windows. I wouldn’t worry.
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im using it for days now with my blon b20 HP
i got it with the ame3 amp module not the thx …
the single ended portion didnt differ from my old stack
which was the khadas tone board and jds labs atom
but the balanced 4.4 output was whole new level
my blon got alive and its not dark and so enjoyable
i never needed the high gain switch on balanced and the knob
didnt pass the 2oclock to get it loud .
the single ended portion of it though made me switch the high gain
to max sometimes with less seperation and less resoluion
using the lineout even with the atom didnt bring that difference
i think the Planars needs that double voltage of the balanced after all
to sound what they should sound…
overall so happy with my purchase …
still think 90 $ is alot for a balanced cable.
but that was my only option and glad i did purchased it with q5s.
I recently watched Currawong’s review from a year ago. At that time he mentioned you needed to go into the app to change the unit’s behavior to “non-charging mode” in order to prevent it from draining the battery on your phone. Perhaps more importantly, he mentioned that you needed to re-do this after every time you turned the Q5s off. There was no apparent way for it to persistently keep the non-charging mode setting. Can anyone confirm whether this is still the situation as of September, 2020? I’m hoping a firmware update from the past year may have resolved this.
I was getting tempted by the Q5s at $299. I’m a mid-grade UI/UX snob though and having to reset that non-charging mode setting every time I turn on the unit is enough to make me want to pass.
I can’t say. I’ve never charged the Q5s from my phone. I have it hooked up to my desktop computers at home & at work.
The Q5 was a nightmare for me. That thing has two USB connections. One for power and one for data. I had so many problems with it, I purchased two of them and returned both.
The Q5s has been perfect. I’ve never had one issue with it. The Q5s has one USB connection both for audio and power.
Not sure about Currawong’s review, but might want to make sure the issue wasn’t already fixed in a firmware update or if he was talking about the Q5s or the Q5.
Thanks for the follow up.
I checked Fiio’s web site and the notes for the current Q5s firmware download don’t mention anything about battery or USB. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be anything from past firmware releases still posted so it’s not possible to tell whether persistence of the USB-only mode may have been addressed sometime previously.
One of my possible use cases for the Q5S would be using it with one of Fiio’s little M6 DAPs as a source. Tiny little device with a correspondingly small battery. Hence my concern.
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Is the Line in input of q5s passes through
Its akm 9943 dac chip ??
Or just taking the signal to the amp ??
Im using 3.5mm bridge from my phone