Fastmail is a pretty decent business email hosting provider but you will find cheaper alternatives on the market. There’s some worthwhile features on show here, from third-party integrations to sizeable storage options, but notbhing that could be considered particularly ground-breaking.
The support is also only okay really - there’s no live chat support, for example - and while Fastmail has some good security credentials - is that really enough to justify its price tag? Although Fastmail claims to offer three apps in one - calendar and contacts, as well as email hosting - many other providers provide similar functionality.
Keep reading to find out why, if budgets are tights, you might be better off looking elsewhere for your business email hosting solution.
Fastmail: Plans and pricing
One of the first things you’ll notice about Fastmail is its price tag - it’s one of the more expensive email hosting services out there. There are three pricing tiers, Basic, Standard, or Professional and for each one you can opt to pay monthly or choose to sign up for an annual, 24-month, or 36-month contract.
The Basic plan will set you back $4 per use per month based on monthly billing, dropping to $3 if you pay yearly, $2.85 on a two-year contract, and $2.80 on a three-year plan. The Standard plan, meanwhile, is $6 per user per month when paid monthly, $5 annually, $4.75 with a two-year subscription and $4.67 if you commit for three years. The Professional plan, ideal for larger businesses with the highest resource needs, is $10 per use per month (for monthly billing), falling to $9, $8.55, and $8.40 per user per month for annual, two-year, and three-year contracts respectively.
Businesses are able to keep costs down somewhat by opting to mix and match plans for their employees. For example, while some staff members may need the Professional plan, for others, the Standard offering may be more than enough. If that’s the case, the flexibility of purchasing different plans for each employee could lead to a substantial saving.
Features
(Image credit: Fastmail)
Fastmail advertises itself as providing three apps in one - email, calendar, and contacts. However, this really does Fastmail a disservice as customers will find that they get a lot more than that. For instance, even with the Basic plan, you get 6GB total cloud storage per user (made up of 5GB of mail, contact, and calendar storage, and 1GB of file storage), multiple customizable addresses per account, masked email for greater anonymity, various themes, and several administration tools.
Moving up the payscale, with a Standard plan, you receive all that plus, some additional storage, and more advanced features like email scheduling, integration with third-party apps like Dropbox, 1Password, various productivity tools, and the ability to mute threads you don’t want to see in your inbox. If you are considering opting for the Professional plan, you’ll also receive a whopping 150 GB total storage per user and an email retention archive for legal compliance.
Overall, the features that come with a business Fastmail plan will help you to build a more professional identity - one of the core reasons why most companies sign up for business email hosting. However, it is slightly disappointing that more advanced functionality can’t be found. For instance, you won’t find any AI tools here. Fastmail even makes something of a big deal about offering Standard and Professional users the ability to schedule send messages - but this is something that is available to everyday Gmail users, so is unlikely to be that will amaze business customers.
Support
(Image credit: Fastmail )
Fastmail’s customer support is primarily provided by support ticket. There’s an online portal that is easy to fill in with your required details and it’s equally straightforward to monitor the status of your ticket. At the bottom of the ticket creation page, there’s also the option of email support, but this definitely feels like a secondary option. It’s also good to keep in mind that there’s no live chat option, which is disappointing if you don’t need to speak with a human support agent.
As usual, there are plenty of resources to hel you resolve any issue you may have yourself. There are quite a few how-to guides online, for example, including tips on how migrate your email account from other brands, such as Microsoft Outlook or Proton Mail. There’s also advice on looking out for spam and managing your account.
Overall, unless you can resolve your particular issue yourself, the lack of live chat support means we found it common to be waiting several hours for an issue to be fixed. Although that may not seem like much, for a business this could be a costly wait - depending on the particular issue.
Security
Security is one of Fastmail’s strengths, with the hosting provider taking your privacy very seriously. Robus encryption is used for all your data, whether in transit or at rest, and there’s full support for two-factor authentication. And there’s a Fastmail Bug Bounty Program to incentivize white-hat hackers to find vulnerabitliies so they can be resolved before any malicious actors can exploit them.
Unlike with some email hosting providers, there’s no difference in the level of security you receive if you sign up to the cheapest plan or the most expensive. Anti-spam filtering is included at all three pricing tiers.
The competition
You can’t really compare Fastmail to other business email hosting providers without talking about cost. As mentioned, Fastmail isn’t the most affordable option currently on the market. For example, if storage is your priority, IceWarp’s Business tier comes with 200GB of email storage and an additional 1TB of file storage for $3.50 per user per month, which is only slightly more expensive than Basic Fastmail plan, even if you pay yearly.
Of course, storage isn’t everything. But even if you want more advanced features, you might want to look at Neo, with its AI Smart Write tool, or something like Google Workspace, with its suite of office productivity and collaboration tools.
Fastmail: Final verdict
Fastmail does a lot of what you want a business email service to provide - including decent storage and security features - but, for the privilege, you are paying a higher rate that you might expect. An okay service with costs you might expect to come with more advanced functionality.
Are you tired of Pixel 9 Pro XL leaks, including several hands-on videos? No? In that case, check out the latest video – this one runs for 19 minutes and is a proper hands-on look at the new flagship model. There might be nothing left to unveil by the time we get to the August 13 announcement.
Starting with the exterior, it seems that Google (like Samsung) has adopted Apple-style flat sides for this generation. The distinctive visor camera bump protrudes from the back quite a bit and it no longer extends from side to side but is now more of an island.
Pixel 9 Pro XL size...
Samsung is working on a mid-range chipset called Exynos 1580, which might be as powerful as the flagship SoCs from 2021 - Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 and Exynos 2100.
According to a Geekbench listing, the new platform will have a CPU with one 2.91 GHz, three 2.6 GHz and four 1.95 GHz cores – similar to the Exynos 2100 or Qualcomm Snapdragon 888.
The Exynos 1580 will reach a score of over 1,000 for a single core and 3,678 for multiple cores (that's on Geekbench 5), which is also on par with the flagship chipsets, built back in 2021 on a 5 nm FinFET process technology.
Exynos 1580...
Edifier is no stranger to the idea of creating a product that, by rights, ought to cost a fair bit more than it’s charging – but with the Stax Spirit S5 wireless over-ear planar magnetic headphones, it might just have outdone itself.
Small and reasonably light where most planar magnetic designs are big and unreasonably heavy, the S5 also have a lot of cutting-edge wireless features. Bluetooth 5.4 with LDAC and aptX Lossless codec compatibility is not to be sniffed at, and neither is aptX Voice for telephony. Having said that, though, the lack of active noise-cancellation will put some people off – and the use of animal hide isn’t exactly going to widen the S5 appeal either.
But let’s imagine neither of these things concern you greatly. What you’re left with is a pair of comfortable, well-made, smartly presented and impressively specified wireless over-ear headphones with an absolute stack of positives where sound quality is concerned. These are as open, as detailed and as revealing a listen as of the best wireless headphones at anything like this price – and they basically demand an audition.
(Image credit: Future)
Edifier Stax Spirit S5 review: Price & release date
Released July 10, 2024
Price: $499 / £499 / AU$949 (approx)
Obviously you’re not short of choice if you’ve this sort of money to spend on a pair of the best over-ear headphones. You don’t have to go very far along the alphabet to find brands as credible as Apple, Bose and Bowers & Wilkins with very similarly priced wireless over-ear headphones to sell you. Safe to say, then, that Edifier has its work cut out.
For quite a bit less, you could have the July 2024-release, five-star $279 / £229 / AU$479Cambridge Audio Melomania P100 wireless over-ear headphones; the Sony WH-1000XM5 can be yours for a little more than that, at around $329 / £319 / AU$549; the Sennheiser Momentum 4 Wireless (which arrived in August 2022) can be found for around $299 / £269 / AU$450 in today's money; the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones are an excellent October 2023-issue pair with a price tag of $429 / £449 / AU$649.
Here's the thing: none of those is a planar magnetic design (praised for its ability to provide extra detail over traditional, dynamic-driver designs). And in case you missed them, the February 2022 Edifier Stax Spirit S3 are a very talented set of headphones indeed. So, plenty to consider.
(Image credit: Future)
Edifier Stax Spirit S5 review: Specs
(Image credit: Future)
Edifier Stax Spirit S5 review: Features
Planar magnetic drivers
80 hours battery life
Bluetooth 5.4 with wide codec compatibility
Ordinarily I’d just start ticking off the many and various features these expensive new wireless over-ear headphones have – but in this instance I think it’s important to start with something they go without. Unlike pretty much every price-comparable rival, the Stax Spirit S5 don’t have active noise-cancellation.
Edifier suggests that the carefully ergonomic design of the S5 frame and of the earpads attached to it (more on those a little later) offers a lot of passive noise isolation. And that may be true, but for some people the lack of ANC will be a deal-breaker.
In every other respect, though, the Stax Spirit S5 are specified very thoroughly indeed.
The headline, of course, is the use of planar magnetic drivers to deliver sound. The overwhelming majority of wireless over-ear headphones, at any and every price, use dynamic driver technology (a conical diaphragm driven by a voice coil within a magnetic field) to create sound. The planar magnetic alternative (which uses an extraordinarily thin diaphragm, embedded with wires, suspended in a gap between two magnets that vibrate the diaphragm to produce sound) is less common for two very good reasons: cost and complexity.
The magnets need to be big enough to cover the entire surface area of the diaphragm, which usually results in a bigger, heavier and more power-hungry arrangement. The diaphragms fitted to the S5 are just 2μm thick, and are implanted with the second generation of Edifier’s ‘EqualMass’ wiring. By connecting different numbers of wires of the same width in a symmetrical structure, Edifier is confident that uniform driving force can be achieved - the diaphragm will move back and forth with the same momentum across its entire surface, and thus minimising distortion.
The S5 are no less lavishly specified elsewhere. They use Bluetooth 5.4 for wireless connectivity, and because they feature the Qualcomm QCC5181 SoC they support cutting-edge codecs like LHDC, LDAC and aptX Lossless – with an appropriate source of music they can serve up digital audio content of 16bit/44.1kHz resolution losslessly, as well as lossy 24bit/96kHz. aptX Voice is also on board, which is deployed in an effort to deliver best-in-class call quality. Multipoint connectivity is on the menu too, and those Android users with a device running ‘Marshmallow’ or later can benefit from Google Fast Pair.
Battery life is a whopping 80 hours from a single charge. Admittedly that’s measured when streaming AAC-derived stuff at midrange volumes, but surely the broad point is obvious: the S5 have better battery life than almost any of the other headphones you might be considering. And in the unlikely event they should require charging from flat, 15 minutes will buy you 13 hours and it takes just 90 minutes to get back to full.
Control happens using a fairly restricted selection of physical controls on the edge of the right earcup (just above the USB-C slot), or the rather more comprehensive ‘ConneX’ app that’s free for iOS and Android. The buttons handle ‘power on/off’ and ‘volume up/down’, and there’s also a ‘multi-function’, the exact function of which can be specified in the app. The app is also where you’ll find wide-ranging EQ adjustment options, selection buttons for the like of ‘game’ mode and multipoint pairing, and so on. The left earcup, meanwhile, features a single 3.5mm input - Edifier supplies both USB-C and 3.5mm cables to facilitate hard-wired listening.
Features score: 4/5
(Image credit: Future)
Edifier Stax Spirit S5 review: Sound quality
As detailed a listen as they come
Positive, entertaining and informative sound
High-frequency reproduction doesn’t enjoy big volumes
It doesn’t matter if you’ve listened to a recording plenty of times before now – I’m confident the Edifier Stax Spirit S5 will find some tiny aspect of it or detail within it that you’ve never heard (or, at least, noticed) before.
For me, it is a 24bit/192kHz FLAC file of Neil Young’s Borrowed Tune streamed via a digital audio player using the LDAC codec. The harmonic variations and dynamic fluctuations in the harmonica playing are fuller, more alive and more complete than I’ve ever heard before. And once it becomes apparent this pair of headphones is able to identify previously unsuspected nuance at the very edges of a recording, you’ll find yourself listening to tune after tune in order to discover what else you’ve been missing.
So yes, there are remarkable powers of resolution and detail retrieval here. But that’s far from the only talent the S5 exhibit. They’re a direct, positive and unequivocal listen, able to entertain just as readily as analyse. They seem willing and able to perform this way no matter the standard or resolution of the content you’re listening to.
(Image credit: Future)
Low-frequency information is deep, varied and has proper substance – but though there’s plenty of straightforward punch here, control is such that momentum levels are high and rhythms get described confidently. Midrange insight is equally impressive, and vocalists of every type have their character, motivations and, quite often, competence described in the barest terms – the S5 communicate with real eloquence, and allow a singer ample expression. And the top of the frequency range is similarly substantial, similarly varied and similarly informative – as long as you’re not listening at significant volume, anyway. Listen very loud and the top end can harden up more than somewhat.
Integration of the frequency range is nicely achieved, and the overall tonal balance is neutral-going-on-cool. There’s a stack of dynamic headroom available when a recording shifts up its intensity or volume, and the attention to detail extends deep into the most minor harmonic deviations.
The Edifier create a large and persuasive soundstage on which all of this can happen, too. It’s deep and wide, properly organised and explicit in its layout – so even a recording with numerous competing elements is easy to follow. Every aspect of a recording gets a little pocket of space in which to operate, and there’s sufficient elbow-room at every stage. But despite the spacious nature of the layout, a recording is still unified into a coherent whole.
As far as noise reduction goes, Edifier is correct when it says that there’s a fair amount of passive isolation offered by the way the Stax Spirit S5 fit. Certainly if you’re listening at home, not much below a distant car alarm is likely to disturb you. But if you’ve experienced headphones with active noise-cancellation, using the S5 while out and about is going to seem peculiar – and not in a good way.
Sound quality score: 4.5/5
(Image credit: Future)
Edifier Stax Spirit S5 review: Design
347g
Comfortable and easy to wear
Liberal use made of animal hide
Just as the ‘features’ section started with a bit of a downer before rallying strongly, so it is with ‘design’. Edifier cares not for the concerns of vegetarians or vegans - that much is obvious from the use of cow hide for the backs of the S5 earcups and lambskin for one of the two sets of earpads it provides. It’s a weird decision to have come to, and those who find the use of these materials distasteful are well within their rights to ignore the Stax Spirit S5 from here on out.
By prevailing planar magnetic standards, the Stax Spirit S5 are agreeably compact and, at 347g, impressively lightweight. The clamping force, the hanger arrangement and the padding at the contact points is all nicely judged - and the ‘cooling’ mesh earpads that Edifier supplies as an alternative to the lambskin numbers take much longer to heat your ears during use, too.
The headband adjustment mechanism feels solid. The headphones are hinged to the point that they’ll fold helpfully small, so the supplied travel case is a fair bit smaller than the norm. The ‘shades of black’ finish is pleasingly realised, too, so not only are the S5 comfortable over the long haul but they don’t make you look in any way ‘try-hard’ while you’re wearing them.
Design score: 4/5
(Image credit: Future)
Edifier Stax Spirit S5 review: Value
Excellent sound-per-pound value
No ANC
Use of leather will mean a 'no' for some users
These are not Edifier’s most affordable planar magnetic over-ear headphones – but nevertheless, at $499 / £499 they’re a fair bit more affordable than the majority of planar magnetics out there. Take into account the great wireless specification, also factor in the lack of active noise-cancellation, consider the build quality and the use of questionable materials, and last but not least the way they sound… the S5 represent unarguable value for money where sound quality is concerned, and cover plenty of bases besides.
Value score: 5/5
(Image credit: Future)
Should I buy the Edifier Stax Spirit S5?
Buy them if...
Don't buy them if...
(Image credit: Future)
Edifier Stax Spirit S5 review: Also consider
The Audeze LCD-1 planar magnetics cost even less than the Edifier Stax Spirit S5 (hurrah!) but their open-backed design makes them unsuitable for public listening, sadly. FiiO’s FT5 planar magnetics are more affordable than the S5, too – but although they sound splendid, they are (for want of a better description) massive, which is going to put some prospective customers off. They’re not wireless, either.
If you can bring yourself to consider dynamic driver designs too, however, a whole world of possibilities opens up – Apple AirPods Max, Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones, Bowers & Wilkins Px8, Sonos Ace… the list goes on.
FiiO FT5 FT5 planar magnetics are less expensive than the S5, too – but while they sound great, they are, for want of a better description, massive, which is going to put some prospective customers off. They’re also not wireless, either. See our in-depth FiiO FT5 review for more
(Image credit: Future)
How I tested the Edifier Stax Spirit S5
Wireless and wired connections
Various different sources 3: numerous file types and resolutions
Numerous file types and resolutions
Of course, wireless headphones tend to be used wirelessly - and so I listened to the Stax Spirit S5 connected wirelessly to an Apple iPhone 14 Pro and a FiiO M15S digital audio player. I also listened to the headphones when wired directly to an Apple MacBook Pro and to the same computer via an iFi iDSD Diablo 2 headphone amplifier. Lots of different music, of lots of different file types and sizes, and a fair few different Bluetooth codecs, were deployed too - and listening happened both indoors and out in the real world.
Smart rings are the new wearable craze with multiple makers launching competing models, but most of them are fairly pricey – for example, a Galaxy Ring is $400, a gen 3 Oura Ring (which is three years old now) still goes for $300. But smart rings don’t have to be expensive as Rollme’s new model demonstrates.
Rollme R3 smart ring in Black, Silver and Gold
The Rollme R3 can be yours for just $90. There are technically two models that precede it, but Rollme launched the R1 in January of this year and the R2 came in March. The R1 is $100 and the R2 is $90.
The R3 comes in...
Realme has quietly introduced a new member of the Narzo N series that slots under the N63 both in terms of price and capabilities. The company focused its attention on building a very durable phone.
The Realme Narzo N61 has a die-cast aluminum structure and an integrated metal frame on the inside, plus reinforced glass on the outside. The company took the effort to add seals on the USB port and the card slot. It also added shock absorption to the main circuit board. The result is a phone with an IP54 rating for dust and water resistance and a TÜV Rheinland High Reliability...
Oppo K12x 5G was just launched in India and it has little to do with the phone of the same name in China. The new arrival borrows the design of the Oppo K12 but has a slightly different footprint. The new phone has a Mediatek chipset and a new set of cameras and is also more durable, as it passed MIL-STD-810H shock-resistance test.
The Oppo K12x has a 6.67" LCD with HD+ resolution and up to 120 Hz refresh rate. Oppo said this is the first phone in its segment with Splash Touch technology, which allows you to operate the screen with wet hands while the panel is also wet.
The...
Apple Intelligence's arrival might be delayed, reports Bloomberg News. According to people familiar with the matter, the AI features will miss the launch of the new iPhones in September and will be distributed in October via a software update.
Apple has yet to push the AI to software developers, but expectations are that it will arrive this week via iOS 18.1 beta and iPadOS 18.1 beta. The service, initially introduced at WWDC back in June, will be available on all new devices powered by the A17 and M series chips.
Some old devices, such as the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max...
Huawei is preparing to launch a new foldable phone called nova Flip. The company posted a teaser video on its Weibo channel, where a member of the TFBoys music band showcased the clamshell from all angles in a lovely Lime green color.
The new phone will have a square cover display, alongside the camera island. The screen is relatively small in current terms, but is still bigger than what the Huawei Pocket foldables had.
The whole teaser is a series of clicks and clacks, which make up the Morse code for the word "Flip." We can see the nova phone will have two cameras on the back, one...
Following two weeks filled with new phones' announcements we finally got a chance to catch our breath and the dust settled that a bit. This enabled the Samsung Galaxy A55 to regain its throne in our trending chart for the first time in three weeks.
[#InlinePriceWidget, 12824, 1#]
There's better news still for the Korean maker as the Galaxy S24 Ultra in second and the Galaxy A15 in third make it an all-Samsung podium in week 30.
The Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max came in fifth, splitting the Xiaomi pair of Redmi Note 13 Pro in fourth and Redmi Note 13 in sixth.
Samsung Galaxy A35 took...
