The FiiO EH11 is a $30 retro headphone with parametric EQ – other brands need to catch up

I’m not immune to a bit of nostalgic pandering – and when I unboxed the FiiO EH11 headphones, I did find myself grinning. With their foam earpads and spindly headband, these retro-kitsch headphones hearken back to the Walkman era. Nineties kids would need a heart of stone not to be charmed.

However, with Bluetooth 6 connectivity and LDAC/AAC codec support, these headphones are all modern on the inside. And yet, somehow, they come at a price of just $30 / £32, making them one of the cheapest Bluetooth headphones on the market. Oh, and did I mention that they come with parametric EQ, so you can make the sound how you like?

Having used the best Bluetooth headphones and the best budget headphones for audiophiles, I was sceptical that such cheap headphones would be able to offer anywhere near the quality I’m used to. But I was curious – so I donned a pair to find out.

Sound profile

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Overall, the stock sound from the FiiO EH11 will likely surprise you – it surprised me. It’s good! It’s not a mind-blowing sound, but it’s warm and detailed, with decent separation of bass and mids in particular. I gave The Smiths’ ‘The Queen Is Dead’ a spin on Tidal, and appreciated the amount of space to breathe there was around each instrument. The overall effect is a mildly V-shaped curve, a profile that gives a judicious amount of space to the high and low ends without overwhelming the mids. Good stuff.

Bass feels quite boosted on the stock sound – possibly a shock-and-awe tactic to immediately convey that these headphones are better than they look, which works to be fair. There’s no deep rumble of sub-bass, as you’re not going to get that on headphones these small, but the bass is well distinguished – I appreciated how clearly I could pick out Andy Rourke’s virtuosic work on ‘Frankly, Mr. Shankly’. Honestly, it’s a real delight, and will probably be the first thing you notice. There’s real weight down there that you wouldn’t necessarily expect from a pair of ‘phones so slim and flimsy.

The midrange impresses with solid clarity that gives vocals a good amount of space around them. In a track like ‘There Is a Light That Never Goes Out’, the vocals had a pleasing warmth, and I could distinguish the acoustic strums very clearly. However, when I swapped to something a bit more orchestrally full-bodied – Father John Misty’s ‘Mashamashana’ – things did get a bit muddier, with less distinct separation between elements. There are limits, I suppose.

Treble is distinct, cutting nicely over the mids. Johnny Marr’s jangling guitars floated over the mix – bright and clear – and the hi-hats and cymbals made themselves known without hiss. Vocals in a higher register – I gave Mitski a spin – sat well in the mix, complementing that prominent bass without being overpowered by it. Mitski’s track ‘The Frost’ was a particular lush delight, with its high strings and low bass driving along side by side, while the shimmering vocals cruised along their own lane in the upper middle.

If I’m nitpicking, a couple of times I noticed some slightly harsh sibilance in the treble, particularly on some Smiths tracks, and when it came time to make my own EQ (more in the next section), I did rein the upper frequencies a tad.

Features

You might not necessarily have expected a pair of $30 headphones to offer parametric EQ control – but the FiiO EH11 headphones do! Download the FiiO Control app, pair the headphones and you’ve got a ten-band EQ at your disposal. The app is undeniably slow and a bit janky – while the Bluetooth connection of the headphones itself was extremely reliable, the app seemed to drop them all the time.

However, the EQ works with immediate feedback, and I was able to craft a sound that I felt cleared up some of the muddiness in the stock sound, boosting a bit of mid-bass to get more definition in the drums.

The app also offers EQ presets for various genres – though to be honest, I wasn’t particularly impressed by these, and often just didn’t understand what they were trying to do. The ‘Pop’ preset simply sucked all the bass out of Lady Gaga’s ‘911’ and made it sound like she was singing at the other end of a tunnel.

If you are in the admittedly probably small Venn diagram of ‘person who cares about EQ but only wants to spend $30 on headphones’, you’re best off just creating your own profile customised to taste. Indeed, once I had done the work of creating my own profile, I found it hard to go back to the default – even though I’d liked it on first listen.

In terms of user control, the headphones are pretty no-frills – but I do really like the rotating knobs on each earcup. The right knob controls volume while the left lets you skip tracks forward or back. Nice and easy – my only complaint is that you rotate the left knob forward to skip a track back, and back to skip a track forward. What?!

There’s no Active Noise Cancelling on these headphones – at this price, it’d be a miracle if there were. Even so, I found that in most public spaces like trains and cafes the sound was full enough that I could tune out the world pretty well. With that said, I am partial to writing in pubs with my own music on for concentration, and for that there was no hope – the ambient chatter and overhead speakers simply overpowered the EH11. There’s only so much a bit of cheap foam can do.

I used the EH11 headphones for a couple of calls, audio and video. While they invariably invited comments (‘Le walkman!’ my French tutor exclaimed, delighted), they performed the required functions with no issues. The mics picked up my voice, and I could hear my partner(s) perfectly well.

Value

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We’ve discussed it already because it’s arguably the EH11’s most notable feature – that $30 / £32 price tag. It’s so low that you could be forgiven for writing the headphones off before trying them, and is the key reason why I was surprised that they sound pretty good.

With that said, there is a feeling of cheapness that pervades the overall package. The supplied cable is USB-C to USB, rather than USB-C to USB-C, and you don’t even get so much as a paltry fabric pouch to keep them in. Come on, man. We couldn’t spare a little bit of fabric?

The EH11 headphones first arrived in January 2026, quite clearly gunning for other popular cheap headphones like the wired Koss KSC-75, or perennially cheap earbuds like the Sony WF-C510. I have to be honest, I think the EH11 headphones offer better value than either, with the convenience of rock-solid Bluetooth 6 connectivity, and a sound that knocks the stuffing out of the Sonys, which I also own.

Comfort & build

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I’ve worn the FiiO EH11 headphones for extended multi-hour listening sessions, and I have no complaints with regard to comfort. They aren’t big enough to overheat your ears, or strong enough to clamp too hard. There is a little adjustability in the headband for smaller or larger heads, though not a lot. With that said, I am blessed with a somewhat large head, and they were perfectly fine for me.

But of course, they are cheap. They look cheap and feel cheap, built as they are around a spindly plastic headband that does not look like it would stand up to much punishment. I was genuinely a bit nervous about keeping these things in my bag with other items knocking about, particularly given that – as mentioned – they don’t come with any kind of protective case or pouch (I sourced my own).

The retro design is certainly charming, and I do love that the rotating control knobs are wood rather than plastic. But I’m a bit sceptical that the headphones would go the distance if I wanted to use them for years – I just think that sooner or later, I’d take them off a little too briskly, or put them in an overloaded bag, and they’d break.

Should you buy?

This is a charming and kitschy pair of headphones, with a warm, detailed and well-balanced stock sound and a significant degree of EQ customisability, neither of which I expected, all for just $30. That's pretty amazing when you think about it.

Granted, they feel flimsy, like they'd eventually break if I used them long enough, but surely if that were to happen, I could simply buy another pair, and still have change left over compared to the price of more advanced headphones on the market.

But… is that good? Does the world truly need more single-use plastic crap? Is it a good thing to buy a pair of headphones so transparently disposable that the makers didn't even bother to include a protective pouch?

It's a tough one, but all things considered, I think the FiiO EH11 stands for more than the sum of its parts. You get a great-looking/disposable-looking pair of headphones, yes. but they sound good, and can sound great with the 10-band EQ. And that makes it one of the best value headphones on sale today. There are issues of how long they'd last, but then that's a bigger problem with all Bluetooth headphones that have unchangeable batteries, so it's unfair to just lay that criticism at EH11's door.

But what the EH11 does to the headphone landscape is more important than all that. It sets the bar for other headphone makers incredibly high. 'We're given people PEQ and super cool aesthetics', says FiiO, 'for $30! What can you do?'

As customers, we should be demanding so much more from other headphone brands when it comes to value. The EH11 helps us be specific with those demands. For that, we should thank FiiO.