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Showing 1 of 15 conversations about:
rumata13
563
Sep 26, 2019
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X5 are selling for $200 on eBay, not sure on-board storage upgrade warrants 50% jump in price.
(Edited)
Whitedragem
185
Sep 26, 2019
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rumata13I could not replicate your success with numbers anywhere near close to that.
I did see a range of prices, sure, but most were not ‘buy it now’ (and if they were they were much higher prices than Drop, didn’t include postage and I would have to confirm by further reading each auctions listings’ as to whether they had all inclusions/what condition they were in/ age, and whether they had any level of warranty etc...
I do understand there are three different versions;
- where version two was stung a little in reviews (or generally praised in ‘eastern markets’) for having a ‘warmer’ tuned sound. When FiiO went back to the first X5s’ “tuning style” with this new version it garnered so much praise.. The version 3 of the X5 is from my readings, universally praised and is seen as the one to get. (Many people upgrading to the newer unit from their earlier offerings) Full disclosure:this part has Viper sound that allows tuning to the users preference when running PureAudio mode.
Ye sure they were ‘buy it now’ listings? I noticed that as the final hour on bid pieces rolled around, in my local market, the second hand prices still went higher than Drop. Which can easily happen as some people have money enough to not want to save it by waiting for Drops customised parts to land.
If second hand- I would have a few concerns:
Battery!
These are a ‘love or hate item’.. earlier firmwares than middle 2019 left the units feeling very unresponsive, to the point that custom firmwares with overclocked processors and much Android tweaking is ‘a thing’. (The process requires a few reboots and installing of various modules and should present no reason for not working with Drops’ X5 ‘S’ edition. Though it isn’t a task to undertake if you are in a hurry... )
The nature of many users getting frustrated with them, when first released until mid 2019, combined with their penchant to drain battery when in ‘sleep mode’ in only half a week, means that many units have probably done a reasonable stint in a drawer or box with their battery depleted. (Electronics like having their batteries in storage hovering between 50-80%) Empty batteries, left so for a prolonged time, will likely have a compromised runtime and offer less hours of enjoyment, and definately a shorter product life until servicing might be required.
Not attempting fear based sales tactics here, and I do believe that the parts SHOULD run/work for many many years.
Accessories!
I would be hesitant to risk missing the inclusions due with the FiiO X5 as they use different (digital) COAX cables for sound output. Think I recall reading in an audio thread somewhere a person being caught out with no digital sound for using their earlier X5 models digital cable; (might have been on FiiOs excellent forum pages, with much discussion about this accessory, and the cable design needed to make digital sound pass purely)
State of second hand unit could be anywhere- I found one in a hock shop that was midway through an OS update. Ran so wonky that I thought this can’t be right- tried the old tech support creed of ‘have you tried turning it off, and back on again’, and sure enough - it had to finish updating android.. the staff and last owner(s) had only been rebooting the device. The unit had been returned to the shop several times due to how hard it was to use/slow and janky it performed - something that a little servicing fixed, sure, but it had certainly been left in a compromised state (with a dead battery no less), with a price fairly equal to Drops. (No brainer really)
(All of a sudden the extra storage included with Drops’ listing is just a bonus)
Some people do not wish to scour ebay listings wanting to sort out the wheat from the chaff.
I have been stung with bricks being posted instead of cutting edge video cards, -Ebay warning me not to post money, my bank not cancelling the transaction (even with five requests from me to do so, getting to the point where the branch manager would intercept me upon arrival), and a long drawn out bank process to get a refund (which I didn’t win!!? -and ‘yes’ I switched banks shortly thereafter)..
Whitedragem
185
Sep 26, 2019
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rumata13Its also ‘in real world usage’ more than a doubling of the memory, as the Operating System has some overheads, and takes up some of the space. Usable space is generally mid to high twenty gigabytes type figures, so having 64Gb is in effect having a lot more than ‘double’ the included storage.
Of course, in perspective, $30 of add on cards would take that to well north of half a terabyte. (;Two MicroSD bays means you can buy two of the best bang for buck storage cards)
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