My favorite affordable audiophile brand just launch new flagship wired headphones – though these ones are pushing the 'affordable' part

• Fiio announces new flagship wired headphones, the FT9
• 106mm planar magnetic drivers and 94dB/mW sensitivity
• Coming later in 2025, for around $800

In the last few years, Fiio has taken a place in the hearts of TechRadar's audio team: excellent, refined, audiophile-class sound from products that usually massively undercut the competition. The brand has taken big spots in our list of the best hi-res audio players as well as our ranking of the best wired headphones – and now, it's got a new product to bother that second list.

I'm really excited by the sound of its new flagship headphones, the Fiio FT7, which are planar magnetic wired cans, which the company says "marks the pinnacle of the lessons learned and technology breakthroughs in all models" of its FT headphones.

Our Fiio FT5 review gave Fiio's previous highest-end headphones the full five stars, and said "They sound great, they’re built to last from tactile and hard-wearing materials, and they have an audiophile specification at a mainstream price."

The new FT7 headphones feature 106mm planar driver, with a 1μm diaphragm and 18 magnets on each side for a well-controlled magnetic field.

With a sensitivity of 94dB/mW, you're going to want to pair them with a headphone amp, but you probably already assumed that, given the general vibe here.

The grille is zebrawood, with the characteristic stripes of that particular material. You have the option to use lambskin or suede ear pads, depending on your sound profile and animal product preferences.

They weigh 427g, which is optimistically described as "lightweight" in the press release I received, though Fiio's good getting the weight distribution right on its headphones, so I expect them to be comfortable enough to settle into.

You get a storage case made from "YauLi linen" with them as well. What price for all this? Well, they're not due out until later in 2025, with a predicted price of around $800 (about £630 / AU$1,250) – the exact amount won't be confirmed until closer to launch, it appears.

As I said in the headline, $800 is definitely pushing beyond most definitions of affordable, but it's all relative – in the hi-fi headphones world, a pair of flagship planar headphones can easily cost $2,000, so if Fiio's headphones are even close to being that level of quality, they're a bargain, of sorts.

That's been the case with products such as as the Fiio M11S and Fiio M23 audio players, which rival high-end and expensive players from the likes of Astell & Kern for quality and specs for much less – the M11S is so good, we use it as our standard source device for testing wired headphones and earbuds.

So I'm excited to see if Fiio can step its headphones up another level successfully, especially since I've been a huge planar magnetic fan since the launch of the Oppo PM-1 years ago, which I still have in a cupboard.

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