In this article, I’m reviewing the FiiO Snowsky Echo Mini portable player. The unit costs $49,99 USD.
Disclaimer: FiiO is not related to Headfonia. The FiiO Snowsky Echo Mini was sent to me to be featured on Headfonia.com.
FiiO Snowsky
Snowsky is FiiO’s latest venture in creating a sub-brand offering a distinct product line. Previously, they’ve created Jade, a sub-brand for their more value offerings. Snowsky is similar in the regard that it offers affordable, youthful, and fun products.
With the Snowsky approach , FiiO is adding a touch of retro in their designs, and the units are just pure nostalgia. We reviewed the first Snowsky unit only a few weeks ago, and that was the FiiO Snowsky Retro Nano DAC/AMP dongle.
You can find this review here:
The Retro Nano is a huge success, so let’s find of if the Echo Mini can repeat that.
FiiO Snowsky Echo Mini
The Echo Mini is the first portable player or DAP, under the Snowsky brand name. When looking at FiiO however, we know that they are masters of portable audio. They have already designed dozens of portable players and that in all price ranges.
This means that FiiO is bringing a lot of expertise to the Snowsky brand, and with their knowledge and production-line, the Echo Mini has some very high expectations.
With the Echo Mini, Snowsky and FiiO are going back to the early days of portable players. Adding a clear retro cassette look and feel to the player’s design. Even if the look and feel is retro, the Echo Mini is a high-resolution lossless player. It even offers Bluetooth version 5.3 (SBC), and gets around 15h of play-time from its 1100mAh lithium cobalt oxide battery. That’s quite impressive, though I have to admit I never tested a full battery load all the way to the end.
The Echo Mini does not have a replaceable battery design. Snowsky did this in order to be able to install a larger capacity battery. If they had used a replaceable battery, only a 450mAh battery could have been installed.
Unlike your cassette player from back in the 80s, the Echo Mini comes with both a 3.5mm output as well as a modern balanced 4.4mm output. It also sports double CS43131 DACs, and delivers up to 250mW of power.
The FiiO Snowsky Echo Mini supports DSD, WAV, FLAC, APE, MP3, M4A, and OGG formats (No SAC/DTS). The player features 8GB of built-in storage and supports microSD cards up to 256GB.
You will need this as this is the only source for your music. There’s no Wi-Fi or streaming or DAC options for your other digital source. The Echo Mini also is Gold label certified, which is an important label on the Asian Market.
The FiiO Snowsky Echo Mini’s dedicated website can be found here. The unit’s price goes as low as $49,99 and it can be bought from FiiO directly on Amazon or via one of their dealers.
Design & lay-out
The FiiO Snowsky Echo Mini is available in black, blue and pink and as you can see in the pictures, we received the latter for review.
The Echo mini is very plastic but it is small and incredibly light. It measures about 80 x 54.5 x 14.5mm, weighs only 55g and it sports a 1.99 inch 170 x 320 IPS full-view HD color Display. The screen houses various dynamic Retro Ul’s, which – according to FiiO – bring back the era of portable cassette players.
The body of the Echo Mini is made of PC + ABS engineering plastic. Although it is plastic, FiiO has sprayed it with a metal paint, and the texture looks and feels.
From a lay-out point of view, the Echo Mini is a very simple player. The screen is on the front, both outputs and reset button are on the right. On the left you find the USB-C cable and the Micro-Sd port.
On top of the units you will find all the control buttons, in the good old cassette style. You from left to right have the power button, volume and control buttons, play/pause/select button, menu button and return button.
The back of the unit shows a fake battery compartment. Unfortunately the battery is not replaceable on this unit.
There also is a lanyard connection tip at the bottom left side of the player, a cool feature!
Box, Accessories & Price
The FiiO Snowsky Echo mini comes in a simple small blue box. Looking at the $49,99 USD price tag, I am even impressed by the box and what you find inside.
You of course get the Echo Mini DAP, a normal USB Cable, a quick start guide and a warranty card. There’s no leather or plastic case provided, but again I was not expecting that either at this price point.
Firmware / User Interface / Usability
The FiiO Snowsky Echo Mini is a very simple, back to basics DAP. It’s small, light and very pocketable. It’s a delight to carry with me in my pockets around the house. If you’re used to carrying an AK brick in your back pocket, the Echo Mini simply disappears.
As there is no touch screen you will have to do everything with the buttons on top and navigate through the menu structures. Luckily there aren’t too many options here and the menu structure is quite simple.
Once you get the idea, it’s actually very easy to work with the player and its menus. Make sure you have the latest firmware installed named —V1.4.6—, updated on 2025-03-24.
This version also allows you to use the two main buttons as fast forward and return. One click changes the volume, a double click the track, and a long press the timer. Once inside the volume menu, a long press changes the volume fast.
As said, working with the Echo Mini is easy. Taking the price and simplicity into account, I was positively surprised to find screen options, EQ settings as well as filter and gain settings. You can use these to tune the sound to your liking.
When music is playing you get the awesome cassette look and feel, so I do recommend to set the screen time out to off (screen always on) as this really is a lovely feature. It’s a small screen so a lot is going on in it.
You get a lot of information about the file type, the artist and all the settings, but it on the screen is nicely structured within the cassette design. There’s also an option to switch to a turntable look. The small screen is quite nice and it’s a good quality.
FiiO and Snowsky even added dedicated settings for a power-off timer as well as power saving options (shutdown) which I frequently used. The only thing I don’t really like here is that FiiO implemented a true shuffle mode.
This means that you on each press back or forward (double click) will get to hear a different song. If you accidentally click one time too many and you want to go back to the song you accidentally skipped, that’s not going to happen. The order is always different.
Don’t forget that this is a local storage based player only. There are no Wi-Fi, streaming or wireless connectivity options. The Echo Mini does feature BT 5.3 (SBC) but note that Apple Bluetooth headphones are not supported. I hade a hard time getting my ZE3000 connected to be honest.
You can find the full player’s specifications here.
Sound – Introduction
In this short chapter we always check out how the brands describe the sound of their units.
According to FiiO, the tuning of the Snowsky Echo Mini is relatively neutral. As mentioned earlier FiiO did implement an EQ and filter function so you can tune the sound.
FiiO also announced that they would add some retro EQs later, though these are not present yet. I am not sure either what retro filters are supposed to sound like, but I would guess they have a slower pace, warmer tonality and analogue presentation.
Sound – General
Don’t forget that the FiiO Snowsky Echo Mini is a low-priced, entry level DAP. That said, it does perform really well, especially at this low price point.
Of course if you’re used to handling and listening to higher-end DAPs such as the Astell&Kern SP3000T, HiBy R8II or iBasso DX340, the Echo Mini will not impress you from a use and sound point of view. But that’s all normal.
The CS43131 DAC chips on the inside are well-known and they have already proven to be excellent performers. You can find some of our CS43131 reviews here.
One of the first things you will notice when listening to the Echo Mini, is it’s full and weighty presence. This is present from top to bottom, but it is quite balanced as well. Except for the vocals that are placed a little more to the front, everything blends in nicely.
The part on Sound continues on the second page. Click here or use the jumps below.
