Fifine Ampligame H9:- An Affordable Headphone With A Good Sound Quality
I received Fifine Ampligame H9 from Fifine to review & give my opinion on. And I found it quite decent for its retail price. It’s slightly cheaper than my current Sony headphone. I usually listen to stuff while working & doing my other things, and so I used Fifine Ampligame H9 as my main headphone while writing this review. I also tested it with various games on various game consoles.
For a starter, I found it comfortable to wear. Specially since I like it when a headphone earcups surround my ears. The mixer control makes it easier to control the volume of both the headphone & the microphone, and it’s useful if your keyboard doesn’t have dedicated volume keys. It can also be clipped to your shirt, and has a button to activate the 7.1 surround sound feature, as well as a toggle switch to mute the microphone.
While I don’t think the 7.1 surround sound is a feature worth pursing in headphones, it’s still nice to have, since the effect makes watching certain things or playing certain games better in my opinion, specially since it is built in the hardware itself, and so you can always have it in all your devices.
The bass in the headphone was good, but it’s not on par with the higher-end headphones. Unless you’re the kind of people that really cares about it, I don’t think that’s an issue. The microphone can be attached to the headphone if needed. I found it on par with the microphone I tried. And since you can plug Fifine Ampligame H9 to any device with USB port, I was able to use it with my iPad Pro 2021 with a cheap USB-C adapter.
Just to be clear. I don’t consider myself an expert when it comes to headphones, but I used many of them for years from multiple brands like Sony, SoundPeat, SkullCandy, and Toshiba, both wired & Bluetooth models, and I consider myself knowledgeable to a degree. I will try my best to give my sincere opinion on it. Including testing it in various ways that will hopefully cover everything.
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Pros Of Fifine Ampligame H9
- Has good sound quality.
- Comfortable to wear
- Affordable for what it provides.
- Can be plugged to either 3.5 mm headphone jack or USB port.
Cons Of Fifine Ampligame H9
- None so far.
Overview
Let’s take a quick look at Fifine Ampligame H9. I found the build quality to be quite good. while I wouldn’t call it luxury, it’s considered quite good for the price. The matt ear cups are large enough that they enclose my ears, which is how I prefer headphones, as opposite to the headphones that rests on the top of them. The pads are good & comfortable to wear, and they do the job well, and you can replace them with softer ones if you like to in the future.
Fifine Ampligame H9 can be plugged directly to the headphone jack of your device, or to the mixer that comes with it, which in turn plugs it to any USB port. The mixer allows you to control the volume & few other things. It can also be useful for devices that don’t have headphone jack, which I will talk about later. I will talk about the mixer in more details in its own section
The moment I plugged it to my USB port, Fifine Ampligame H9 worked right away. I tried it on another computer and it also worked right away. In the worst case scenario, you may need to set the sound source manually from settings. The user guide shows you how to do that in both Windows & Mac OS.
Fifine Ampligame H9 comes in 3 colors, white, black & pink. I have got the black one. Though I also think the white also looked beautiful:-
For the initial test, I found the sound quality to be good. It was my main headphone during the period of the review. I used it for listening to music, watching Anime & YouTube videos, as well as gaming on various consoles, which covers most of the use cases of it. I did some quick tests of the microphone, and I found it on par with the other headphones I have.
The Mixer
Fifine Ampligame H9 comes with a mixer accessory, which is a little remote that can be clipped to your shirt, which can be useful if you plan to use the headphone while taking a walk. It also contains volume controls for both the headphone & the microphone. There’s a small toggle for the 7.1 surround sound feature, which I will cover shortly. At the side of it, there’s a toggle switch to mute the microphone. That can be useful if you were recording your voice and you wanted to clear your throat, or when you don’t want your online buddies to hear the phone call you just got, and things like that.
The headphone cable combined with the adapter’s is quite long, which is nice if you plan on using it on a console like the Nintendo Switch dock, and you can always tie it in case it felt too long to your liking. I like that it takes the need of having to use a 3.5 extender cable.
Sadly, you can only use the mixer if you plan on plugging Fifine Ampligame H9 to a USB, but that works on the majority on devices. I tested that on the following devices:-
- PC (USB port)
- PC (3.5 mm headphone jack).
- Xbox Series X Controller headphone hack on PC (The controller needs to be connected with USB cable).
- PS4 (plugged into USB port)
- PS4 (plugged into the 3.5 mm port of the controller)
- Nintendo Switch (plugged into the USB port on the dock).
- iPad Pro (used USB-C adapter to plug it).
The 7.1 Surround Sound, Is It Worth It?
Before we talk about this feature, we need to define what 7.1 surround sound actually means. It’s an arrangement of 7 speakers + subwoofer around the room (Center, Front Right, Front Left, Side Right, Side Left, Rear Right, Rear Left, and the 0.1 refers to the subwoofer). That arrangement creates the surround sound experience, and the placement of the speakers makes a big difference in that.
Since the speakers’ placement is a key to the 7.1 experience, this can be quite difficult to achieve using two speakers around your ears, even with more components in the headphone. So keep your expectation low about this. This is the case with any headphone with a 5.1 or 7.1 label, not just Fifine Ampligame H9.
Anyway, I tried the 7.1 surround sound feature in Fifine Ampligame H9, which is activated by pressing the middle button in the mixer. It sounded better for me in some cases. It simply makes certain sounds more pronounced. I found that useful in Anime, since it makes distinguishing the sounds easier, which can be helpful for my Japanese learning. To be 100% honest, while the effect can be nice & useful, you can obtain very a similar effect to the 7.1 by installing some virtualization software, but it’s still nice to have it built in the hardware, since you can’t install such software in consoles, for example.
Testing Fifine Ampligame H9 With Various Games
Now it’s time to test Fifine Ampligame H9 with various games. I started it with Lies of P, a good game I started recently. I walked around the town & fought various enemies, then went on to fight & defeat the first boss. The 7.1 mode made the rain sound more pronounced. Something some people may not like, so it may be better to turn it off during such segments.
I also tried it with Battlefield 2042. The experience was good, and I liked the sound quality. I haven’t encountered any situation where I managed to know there’s enemy behind me using sound only.
A since the sound quality was good, I had a good playing Tekken 8. I had to turn off the 7.1 effect, since it sounded better without it in this game.
If you like, you can plug the 3.5 mm cable to your Xbox or Playstation controller. Although, in case of my Xbox series X controller on PC (my main controller), the controller itself needs to be plugged to the computer via USB for that to work.
I tried Fifine Ampligame H9 on PS4. You can either plug it into the 3.5 mm headphone jack of the controller (and you don’t need to plug it into the PS4 at all), or into any of the USB ports on the PS4 itself. I found that the 7.1 effect goes well of the ambient music of the game The Tomorrow Children.
I played a bit of Link Awakening on the Switch, with Fifine Ampligame H9 plugged into the USB port of the dock. This is another game I thought the 7.1 worked well with.
Bass Test
I listened to some music of my own, and I also went through some bass tests on YouTube to see how the bass sounds. While I think the bass was good, but I wish it was a bit stronger. But since I wasn’t expecting a strong bass from any headphone at this price level, I won’t count this as a con on this headphone, but I thought it was important to mention it.
Here are some of the bass tests I tried, they aren’t too long, and can be useful for testing your current headphone too:-
Beautiful Bass Speaker Test
Subwoofer Bass Test Music
Trying Out Fifine Ampligame H9 With The Ipad Pro 2021 (A Device With No Headphone Jack)
Since Fifine Ampligame H9 can be plugged into any device with USB port. I thought about trying to plug it into my iPad with a small USB-C to USB adapter, and that worked right away. You could already plug the headphone to it if you already have a USB-C to headphone jack adapter, but it’s nice to have the option to use the mixer & have a longer cable, and you may already have a USB-C adapter laying around.
The 7.1 effect worked on my iPad. Which was nice to use when I watch to some of my favorite YouTube channels, like Asianometry or the 8-Bit Guy.
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And Finally
Overall, I found that Fifine Ampligame H9 provides good listening experience. I can easily recommend it for its price & the features it provides. It’s on par with headphones that are a bit more expensive. So if you’re a real basshead, this is a feature you need to shell out more cash for. Having the option to use either the headphone jack or USB out of the box is a plus.
I hope you liked my Fifine Ampligame H9 review, and see you again in another one. If you are an iPhone or iPad user, then check out my iOS apps, which are apps I developed & published in the store, including a PDF reader with very nice features..
And before I finish this review, I have something very important to say:- The smiley faces on the cups are so cute:-
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