FiiO JM21 - Delivering Values Beyond The Price. Highly Versatile DAP

0:02 If you were to check the catalog of FiiO digital audio player as you can see here this JM21 can be regarded as entry level budget friendly entry level priced at just over 200 us dollar and you want to know what after spending quite a bit of time using this i am not sure whether this should be considered as entry level because this thing really rocks let's

0:51 have a closer look at this JM21 all right i think one of the first appeal looking at this device is that it is surprisingly thin for a digital audio player the thinnest which i have seen so far even in fact thinner than R1 perhaps and the construction the side here the panel all aluminum and this is the display itself and at the back here unfortunately this is plastic so as you can see here i wish this could have also been aluminum but then again because of this let's just compare it with the rest of the digital audio player which i have in my hand starting with my phone first to get a bit of perspective the size and the dimension of

1:36 this JM21 and this is my Sony Xperia 1 MK 4 as you can see here obviously the phone is a lot thinner but it is also a lot wider and taller too and let's just compare it with my gigantic iBasso DX340 here as you can see this thing is literally like an elephant compared side by side with JM21 from the thickness itself and also let me just do this find out the weight of this JM21 so now now very impressive just under 160 gram because if i

2:23 were to measure this there you have it half a kilo of this giant here and my phone is at around yep so my phone is actually heavier so meaning to say that if you were to carry around a digital audio player one of the first appeal of this JM21 is that it is super lightweight perhaps that's why the construction is being made of plastic here and very minimal usage of aluminum here and of course on top of it it comes with all the bell and whistles to be expected of a modern digital audio player with this 3.5 mm single ended here 4.4 mm balance which also serve as dual purpose for line out line out and SPDIF digital out

3:11 yes and we have here volume rocker which is volume adjustment up and down i think based on FiiO standard it is at around 120 steps and this is on and off of course and you have the player control over here which is forward play and pause and reverse and nothing here if i were to nitpick on anything i would say that the display of this JM21 would appear kind of a bit jaded kind of a bit lacking with contrast so just to give you a bit of perspective again i'm just gonna take this iBasso DX340 here which i like to remind you first cost a lot more almost 2000 us dollar and runs on amoled as you can see here side by side the contrast is a lot stronger on this DX340 and even if

3:59 i were to compare it with some other devices using the same ips lcd it does appear kind of a bit jaded still and even under direct sunlight i need to crank this brightness here to the maximum like this in order to get something which is viewable used as a portable device this JM21 driving magnetic planar like this SIVGA Nightingale which i'm wearing right now i was able to get around nine hours of runtime before it dry before it drain out the battery running local audio playback using the FiiO app and if i switch

4:46 to tidal which is streaming i was able to get in excess almost eight hours i would say that it is kind of a bit low considering that FiiO claimed that this thing was capable of running up to 12 hours local audio playback and also while at it this JM21 i have tested it running continuously with the heat management it was able to score at around just under 36C of temperature so I would say that it is fairly okay considering that this is a very small device this is

5:31 a full-time dedicated android digital audio player so let's just quickly have a look here as you can see here under the about device okay this thing is made of snapdragon 680 quite impressive and also on top of it most importantly it also runs on the flagship Cirrus Logic CS43198 two of it inside and of course it comes with this despite being budget 3 gb of ram and 32 gb of internal storage and of course which means that i would need to use this MicroSD here in order to get my local audio files into this player and on top of it it runs on android 13 and it is also src free which i will show you later so let's

6:17 just have a look at some of the audio function which is synonym to vio under audio here you have an option to choose between phone out line out or even SPDIF and the 4 .4 mm balanced which only have this phone out and balance out and of course you have three level of gain which really works and the filter here now this is very interesting as you can see here we are being offered six different type of filter and this filter really work i have tested them which is quite impressive which is not a surprise because usually Cirrus Logic CS43198 tend to be very effective at filters so a rule of thumb as usual if you have something which you connect to this digital audio player being bright

7:04 sounding you might want to use this slow roll off that is why why you see it here or most of the time you use non oversampling which means that no alteration to the filtration itself or if you have something which is warm sounding you would want to use fast roll off minimum phase filter and of course you have this option very impressively as well maximum ldac connectivity which means that near lossless bluetooth communication playback from this JM21 and of course you have an option to do a bit more of adjustment here so pretty much i would say for 200 us dollar the appeal of this JM21 having all those sort of option and remember just now i mentioned about src free android device so what does it mean

7:50 let me just give you an example i have here tidal native app which is downloadable from the google play store and as you can see here all right let me just run one file from dynacraw which is high resolution okay let me just play with this okay and this file runs on 96k and through indeed as you can see here at the top the resolution says 96k so it does not do any kind of resampling even if you are using native tidal app so that is already a huge appeal to me everything anything that you install on this JM21 just like high-end digital audio player you will always play back on bit perfect for local audio playback we use FiiO

8:38 music app as you can see here already loaded and assuming that you have inserted your micro sd and you already did the scan this is how it shows on the player itself and for example let me just talk about the resolution itself first you see the limitation of this JM21 is up to dsd 256 because if i were to try like say play something which is one bit dsd 512 this is gonna get format not supported okay so it is up to dsd 256 and also pcm 384 kilohertz and if i were to play something which is like this normal flag file here and this is where you do all the music control especially for the equalizer i know a lot

9:24 of people would require this so turning it on like this you have an option to either customize it okay or you can use custom at which there is a 10 band equalizer here and this thing really works and also the limitation of this equalizer is that it is not system wide so which means that outside of this FiiO music app running tidal like this or any other player that you install into this you don't have equalizer being implemented to the output played on this tidal app last but not least let's just see what else this JM21 capable of doing let's just have a look here you see you can change the mode android mode

10:10 which is a default one pure music mode let me just show you and this is essentially unlike some other digital audio player which i have tested okay this does not necessarily switch or boot up into a different os it is still android you would notice here okay even the internet connection still work so it is not exactly an offline player but it is a much more simplified with the kind of background operation or background process limited and of course you also have this airplay which i don't use so just click cancel and of course you also have this usb deck mode at which this JM21 will then will behave like a dedicated external deck

10:57 amp to connect either to your phone or to your pc or to your macbook no worries at all and of course switching back to bluetooth this is another option which is very flexible it is in bt receiving mode rated at 700 milliwatt of power per channel at 32 ohm this thing JM21 without doubt the most powerful depth that you're going to find in the market in the sub 200 us dollar price point to give you a bit of perspective that power is even higher than the HIBY r6 pro max which is a top

11:43 tier 1000 us dollar dap so which means that this JM21 have no issue at all driving something like sennheiser hd 600 300 ohm with ease with the kind of sound authority which i would normally associate with desktop deck amp and also driving with ease magnetic planar headphone like half mn aria unveiled which i have without any issue at all definitely you have no issue at all driving any kind of magnetic planar im and also despite being super powerful it is also very subtle with very sensitive im hybrids anything under 16 ohm no issue at all so this thing is super impressive when it comes to driving power for the

12:35 price point of 200 to 300 us dollar there's few competition in the market which i can think of to compare with this JM21 here and in fact i only have one on top of my mind which is the HIBY R4 which i reviewed very recently both of them android based digital audio player and both of them offering so many things so many versatility with the sound itself so let's just start with the comparison itself starting with the build this thing is definitely smaller lighter and thinner as opposed to the all aluminum construction of HIBY R4 and when it comes to sound and performance first and foremost the difference being the performance this is definitely a bit more powerful almost 200 milliwatt

13:22 more powerful than the 552 or 525 milliwatt of R4 but R4 runs on class a amplifier and this one probably run on either class b or class ab and the sound presentation itself both of them are actually equally matched as far as i am concerned as far as my listening ability is concerned they are equally matched because i consider this JM21 just like R4 being transparent neutral uncolored and accurate which means that you can expect faithful sound reproduction from both of them you can expect no coloration to the output itself unless of course you start to play with the mseb or equalizer and talking about equalizer one of the key differences between those two is that this JM21 as i have

14:10 shown you earlier in order to use the equalizer and some of the feature with the audio you need to use the FiiO native app and if you use something else something like tidal or any other app then you're not going to get the equalizer unless of course you install different type of app to control the equalizer and R4 instead offer system-wide equalizer and mseb so that is another appeal for R4 but on top of it also you have to remember this thing does not run as hot as the class a R4 going back to the aspect of sound like i said earlier R4 and this JM21 are pretty much equally matched but there are some subtle differences first differences being the timbre itself you see this thing being faithfully neutral uncolored does not influence

14:56 any kind of temperament to the timbre itself where the R4 does offer a bit more of analog feel to the sound itself so which means that this is a bit more hi-fi and the R4 a bit more analog sounding and of course if i were to stretch it a bit further going under 200 us dollar we have something like Shanling m1 plus and also this HIBY r3 mark ii but then you have to remember those two digital audio player offer limited function because they are non -android which means that you're going to use whichever that is already available on those digital audio player and when it comes to sound again i would say that this is a bit superior when it comes to dynamic extension dynamic presentation and transparency and accuracy so this is one of the reason why i think this JM21 being not exactly a budget

15:45 or entry-level depth but something which is a high value digital audio player to get for 200 us dollar if you like what you're hearing what you're seeing please subscribe to my channel if you haven't done so and also please take a moment to click like here it will really help me out it is free by the way and also please follow me on instagram which i have set up very recently my instagram would be a platform for me to provide quick updates on the things that i do beyond this video and again thank you so much from the bottom of my heart