Originally Posted by
PTravel
I'll certainly report back, but it appears to be a time-limited deal.
One point: The X5 is a new device by Fiio. The first manufacturing run was sold in China, only. The idea was to work out any bugs "locally." The next run is intended for world-wide distribution, with sales in the US starting in March through Amazon. The one offered for sale is undoubtedly the Chinese model. It is possible that Fiios, which is a company that pays a lot of attention to quality, decided to halt distribution of the Chinese model in China in favor of the "version 2" production run and the seller is a "rogue" who decided to dump the remaining version 1 players rather than destroy or return them.
However, we'll see.
That is certainly plausible, although the unit is supposed to be firmware upgradable, so unless there's some hardware differences I'm not sure why there should be a V2 versus a V1 model so early in the game. I have a FIIO E17 Alpen DAC/headphone amp and for the price it's remarkably well built and has tremendously good sound quality.
Definitely keep us posted.