FiiO puts a diamond coating on its new £499 flagship
The FT15 replaces the FT5 with 101mm planar drivers, a diamond-coated diaphragm, black walnut earcups and a 4.4mm balanced connection — and it is on sale now.
FiiO has launched the FT15, a new flagship open-back planar magnetic headphone that takes over from the FT5. It is available now at £499, $500 or €500, and FiiO's own listing describes it plainly as a diamond-coated nano-diaphragm planar over-ear design.
The driver is the story. The FT15 uses 101mm planar drivers, and at the centre of each sits an ultra-thin diaphragm with a diamond coating applied across its face to add rigidity without adding the mass that usually comes with stiffness. FiiO pairs that with what it calls a uniform magnetic field design, using contoured high-strength magnets to suppress the diaphragm breakup and distortion that planars are prone to when the film flexes unevenly.
Wood, carbon and copper
The earcups are cut from black walnut, which means every pair carries a different grain, and a carbon fibre headband is there to keep the weight down. The cable is monocrystalline copper and is cryogenically treated, and the FT15 ships with a 4.4mm balanced connection plus 6.35mm and XLR-4 adapters for desktop sources.
What Hi-Fi puts the FT15 between two known quantities: the Award-winning Grado SR325x at £250 and the Beyerdynamic T1 third generation at £699. That is a deliberately awkward gap. Sitting just under the established dynamic flagship means FiiO is asking buyers to weigh materials and driver technology over a brand with decades of tuning heritage.
FiiO has not published a UK availability date beyond “available now” and has not detailed an EU or UK review programme, so the arguments about this headphone will be settled by measurements and listening rather than by the spec sheet.
Our opinion
Diamond coatings and walnut earcups are easy things to put on a press release and hard things to hear, and £499 is exactly the price where that distinction decides whether a headphone sells. What is genuinely notable is the direction of travel: a Chinese manufacturer with a decade of excellent budget DACs behind it is now launching a near-£500 open-back planar and pricing it against Beyerdynamic rather than against itself. The materials make the headlines, but the tuning is what has to justify the badge, and on that the FT15 is unproven until someone puts it next to an SR325x and a T1 and tells us honestly which one they kept.