136G MP3 Player with Bluetooth, SnowSky/FiiO Echo MINI Music Player 15Hours Playback, Independent Volume Control with 3.5mm/4.4mm Headphones Outputs, up to 256GB(Black)

Pros: Retro, lightweight, cheap-er, sound quality, volume.Cons: Chinese, slow, difficult to navigate.If you are looking for a functional MP3 Player on the cheaper side or just want a retro MP3, I can recommend the Snowsky Echo Mini. So far for the past couple of days, it has been dependable, and I've been able to mostly figure it out after messing around with it.The Snowsky only comes with 7GB of internal space, so you will need a microSD card for it. It's able to hold up to 256GB of space. You will have to manually update it by downloading the new firmware from the Fiio website, which was very easy, just drag and drop the update file into the internal (not external) MP3 storage.BEWARE!!!! It will reset all settings (including language to Chinese) to factory after updating, so make sure you know how to get to the language settings beforehand.The UI and general navigation is a bit finnicky and slow, but it doesn't bother me much, I thought that was part of the charm. I could understand how it would get on people's nerves though. Trying to find a specific song that you want to listen to is hard, but there is a favorites tab that you can save songs to make it a little easier. Volume goes up a surprising bit, and sound quality is pretty dang solid. It features an equalizer, which I like to put on Bass and sometimes Pop. I have not tried out the bluetooth on it, so I can't say anything about it personally, but I've seen from others that it's finnicky with Airpods.I thought MP3's would be cheaper (like $20), but after some digging, it looks like you get what you pay for. This is one of the cheaper but functional MP3's on the market, but not quite cheapest. I was drawn to this one specifically because of its looks, it's very retro, and has physical buttons.I like buttons. I like retro stuff. I like physical media. I like owning songs, not just having the license to listen to them. I like having free music. This is all of the above.

Before starting, it has no Radio/Spotify or any smart feature capability so move on if it's essential to you. The device does handle all audio formats and when you first load your music onto it, make sure it's on first to make it easier, with a few gigs of internal storage but external micro SD support up to 250 gbs, make sure you refresh your music the storage so your device can detect it. It's a one time thing so once it detects it, it'll recognize it even after you pull out the card. There's also a couple software quirks that I'll discuss near the end.Now then, if you're looking for just a bare bones mp3 player with no BS smart features and lame need for features like Spotify voice recognition or radio, this thing is, an absolute beast!Audio quality is amazing, it's not only louder then most mp3 players and even all smart phones, it sounds significantly cleaner and for you bass heavy enjoyers, you'll get top of the line low end that can sound really loud and clear without distortion, only premium players can rival it. It also can make subpar sound systems sound good (my 13 Mazda for example) and handle good bass, it will also turn good sound systems into high end (such as my 07 Camry and my Sennheiser Hd 25s headphones, which made the headphones sound notably better especially low end).It is tiny and light but doesn't feel flimsy, feels great but do factor that in when transporting it or using wired connections with weight to them. The aesthetic is super cool if you like retro style.Interface is intuitive, use volume buttons to navigate, play/pause to select, playlist looking button to bring up music settings (can also be used for navigation in the custom eq settings to shift through frequencies, using volume to boost or reduce the selected ones), and rewind button to back out.When enabled through settings, it does have fast forward and rewind capability.Now onto the software quirks:Biggest things are Bluetooth and Micro SD card detection:I had no issue with connecting my cheaper 5 below Bluetooth and it even detected some TVs, but it couldn't find my over 6 year old skull candy headphones.While I've had no issues with my SanDisk micro SD card, I used 3rd party software which is easy to find to format it to Fat32 just in case, some users have reported issues with other brands and other formats.It seems like it will work fine with most modern BT devices and cards.Volume buttons are the same as fast forward/rewind and next/previous track when playing music, so it can be a bit touchy, but easy to overlook.Overall, this is one of the greatest MP3 players ever made you definitely won't find anything better without spending several hundred dollars and having to deal with the annoyance of lame smart features! This is what should've been the natural evolution for mp3 players, economic while sounding better instead of the sad state of affairs it's in nowadays. This is an absolute must have device!

The TL;DR is the sound is great, its very small and light, its made out of plastic but doesnt feel cheap, satisfying buttons.I havent tested the battery life.Only issues ive had are bluetooth can be finicky to connect and the codec is only the basic one (but i dont use bluetooth all that much so it doesnt matter to me)And that i had really bad audio clipping on flacs ( On FW 1.6.2) but with a FW update to 1.8 everything got fixed!The UI is clunky to use but with some practice i got used to it.Great first DAP.

I really wanted to love this player. The titanium gold finish looks fantastic in person, and it feels like something out of a cyberpunk cassette daydream. The 3.5mm jack works well, audio quality is crisp and clean, and the balanced 4.4mm output is a nice touch for future upgrade potential even though I don't have compatible headphones yet. Being able to load up FLACs, APEs, WAVs, and more without relying on streaming services or using my phone is exactly what I was looking for. MicroSD support plus onboard storage gives enough flexibility for a small curated library.But the quirks add up fast.The claimed 15-hour battery life is wildly optimistic. I get around 4 to 5 hours at best. Bluetooth forgets every paired device each time the unit is powered off, so I have to manually re-pair it every single time. It also cannot connect to my car stereo since that requires a PIN and this player has no way to enter one.The MicroSD card cap at 256GB is limiting. I'd prefer support for 512GB so I could load my entire synthwave archive and not think about it again. Transferring music is basic drag and drop, which works but becomes tedious when you want to swap tracks in and out. With just 8GB internal and no smart music management, it feels like managing a USB stick from 2005.It looks great. It sounds great. It is not great to live with.