Disclosure: The FiiO JM21 was purchased by myself due to the support of readers like you who read my reviews and use my affiliate links when you find a product you like. This review wouldn’t be possible without your support, so thank you.

It’s an amazing time to be an audiophile or even just someone who is venturing into the hobby. Not only has it never been more accessible, but the sheer number of quality products at low prices is now becoming the rule rather than the exception. Up to this point, my go-to suggestion for anyone looking for a budget-friendly, reliable, good-sounding, and good-performing DAP has been the HiBy R4. Its $250 USD price is easily justified for what you are getting. Of course, FiiO could not sit back and just let this happen, so they released the FiiO JM21 digital audio player for under $200. Is it now the ultimate budget DAP? Do the solid specs on paper translate to the real world? I’ve been using the JM21 for almost two months now and have many thoughts, so let’s get into it.

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• FiiO JM21
• USB-C to USB-A cable
• Screen protector (pre-applied)
• Transparent silicone case
• Manual

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The FiiO JM21 is fairly thin at just 13mm, and on the lighter side at 156 grams, meaning the size profile is closer to that of a smartphone than your typical DAP. This is nice as the JM21 is very pocketable and therefore portable and travel-friendly. It’s made entirely of plastic so while you don’t get a premium feeling to it, the plastic itself does have a soft and solid feel. I especially like the texture of the back of the device. The grooves aren’t sharp but it adds a bit of grip when holding it. The overall build quality is good, especially for the price, and the DAP doesn’t have any plastic creaking or misalignments. Just note that it won’t be as durable as a metal or aluminum shell, but FiiO kindly includes a decent silicone case with the device (which also has a cutout for the microSD card. Nice!).

As far as buttons and connections go, the JM21 has a practical and logical layout. The left side of the device has the power/screen lock button and volume buttons. The right side contains the previous track, play/pause, and next track buttons, as well as the microSD card slot. The bottom of the device is where the 3.5mm connection, USB-C port, and 4.4mm balanced connection are located.

The buttons do not stick out very much and feel good to press, requiring just enough pressure to press without being easy to accidentally press. That being said, when the included case is on I found the previous track, play/pause, and next track buttons easy to accidentally press as the buttons on the case stick out just a bit too much.

The screen is very nice for a DAP under $200. The resolution is slightly higher than 720p at 1334×750, and being 4.7 inches there’s enough room for controls and album art without being too big. The colors look good, at least good enough for album art and such, and it gets decently bright. It’s good enough for outdoor use in the sun if you max out the brightness, and for indoor use, you will need to set it to at least 50-60% during the day. The brightness also goes low enough in the dark, so that it’s not too bright for nighttime listening. Finally, the screen has a screen protector pre-applied from the factory, which is a nice touch to ensure longevity and prevent scratches to the screen.

Here’s a size comparison with a few other DAPs, from left to right: Sony NW-A306, Sony NW-ZX707, HiBy R4, and finally the FiiO JM21 on the very right.

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I’ll try and cover as much of the JM21’s features as possible, but if I miss something you’re interested in please comment down below and I’ll try and have it added to the review afterwards.

Android 13 UI and User Experience

The FiiO JM21 uses a custom Android 13 OS. It does have Google Play Store support, and you can of course sideload any APK you like. FiiO also includes its own FiiO Market app with a curated selection of apps that you can install.

Settings and customization are on the barebones side, which I think is fine as this is not supposed to be a smartphone replacement, but instead an audio companion. FiiO uses a very basic launcher that does not include an app drawer, so all of your installed apps instead reside on the home screen. You have the option of installing another launcher if you wish, but I ended up getting used to the stripped-down launcher of the JM21, which I’m sure is also light on resource usage.

The JM21 uses a Snapdragon 680 SOC which is fast enough for Android and most apps and should receive support for a long period of time. You might be worried about an Android device in 2024 having only 3GB of RAM, but I did not run into any scenarios where this would be a limiting factor. All music players and music streaming apps performed very well, as did companion apps such as Sonos, Sennheiser Smart Control, and Sony Sound Connect. Don’t expect games or video apps to perform well though.

I’ll include some screenshots of the Android UI, but you get pretty much all the options that you would expect. Dark mode, notification center with quick toggles, built-in software updater, storage manager, etc. The UI itself is fast and fluid, and you even have the option to switch between gesture navigation, 2-button navigation, and 3-button navigation (personally I’m a gesture navigation guy).

Audio Settings and Global Sound Modes

Looking at the included system-wide audio settings, which can be found by going to Settings -> Audio, both the 3.5mm output and the 4.4mm balanced output can be switched between Power Out (PO) for headphones and IEMs, and Line Out (LO) for connecting to amplifiers. The 3.5mm connection can also be used as the SPDIF out. You also have 3 gain settings to choose from: Low, Medium, and High. You can choose between the various filter modes, select the Bluetooth encoder and quality type, whether to sync the Bluetooth volume or control it independently, and L/R balance.

The JM21 also has several operating modes to choose from: Android Mode, Pure Music Mode (enters the FiiO Music Player and doesn’t allow you to switch to other apps), USB DAC Mode (use as a USB DAC with another device), Bluetooth Receiving Mode (receive Bluetooth audio from another device), and AirPlay (receive audio via AirPlay from an Apple device).

FiiO Music

The default music player on the JM21 is FiiO Music. If you’ve installed and used it on other Android devices then there should be nothing new here. As far as music players go, FiiO Music is actually pretty good and gives you a decent amount of options and customizations. It has a nice-looking lockscreen now playing screen as well. One aspect that I absolutely hate though is Playlist management. Since there is no global EQ/PEQ yet for the JM21 you have to rely on each music player’s EQ implementation, which FiiO Music does have. I haven’t found an easy way yet to import PEQ files, but at least it does have the ability to create them from within the app.

Playlists can be created using other devices or computers and then imported into FiiO Music, but it has to be done in a very specific way. First, the file needs to be in the .m3u8 format. Second, in order to import the playlist you have to connect the JM21 to a computer. This is because FiiO Music doesn’t let you select the location to import from, and forces you to place the playlists in a specific folder. This folder is “\Internal shared storage\Android\data\com.fiio.music\files\playlist”. It can also only be accessed through a USB connection, all of the FTP apps I tried to use were not able to access it due to the Android folder being a protected system folder. You’ll also need to make sure your file paths within the playlist file are correct, mine looks like this (using an editor like VS Code makes it easy to modify the playlist):

Personally, I’ve been switching between FiiO Music and UAPP (USB Audio Player Pro), which is my go-to Android music app.

Battery Life

The FiiO JM21 offers good battery life for its size and price. Here are my results using both the FiiO Music and Apple Music apps. WiFi was turned off, and all files are stored locally on the MicroSD card.

Standby time  – About 14 days (~6% battery loss over 24 hours)

FiiO Music playback time

3.5mm output, low gain, volume 46 – 13 hours (~7-8% battery loss over 1 hour)

Bluetooth output, aptX HD, volume 46 – 20 hours (~5% battery loss over 1 hour)

Apple Music playback time (downloaded files for offline playback)

3.5mm output, low gain, volume 46 – 11 hours (~9-10% battery loss over 1 hour)

Bluetooth output, aptX HD, volume 46 – 20 hours (~5% battery loss over 1 hour)

Connectivity

The WiFi performance on the JM21 is very good. It connects using WiFI 5 at a connection speed of 433mbps. I encountered no issues when using WiFi to download music for offline playback, or streaming music.

Bluetooth is also very good. I mainly tested the LDAC and aptX HD codecs and both performed as I expected. Range is also very good. One issue I did initially have is sometimes the audio would stutter or speed up/slow down. Even updating the JM21 to the latest software version didn’t help. Disconnecting and reconnecting the Bluetooth headphones sometimes fixed it, but a factory reset is what ultimately resolved the issue for me.

Overall User Experience

My main usage with the JM21 has been with the FiiO Music app, Apple Music, Qobuz, and UAPP. All of these apps work very well and I had no issues with performance. My music, both FLAC and MP3 files, are on a MicroSD card. I also download files from Apple Music and Qobuz to the MicroSD for offline playback. All of this worked well, but I was surprised just how well streaming music worked. Whether I was streaming through Apple Music or Qobuz, it was fast and fluid and performed pretty much the same as on my smartphone.

The FiiO JM21 uses dual Cirrus Logic CS43198 DAC chips and dual SG Micro SGM8262 amps. Both the 3.5mm single-ended and 4.4mm balanced connections give you great sounding and clean audio performance. The JM21 was able to drive all of my IEMs and headphones without issue. There was no hiss or static with any of my IEMs, and both audio connections had no problem driving any headphones I used with it. I never had to use high gain mode at all. You may start running into power issues when using high-end headphones, but at that point, I feel you should be pairing your headphones with an appropriate source. For 99% of users, the JM21 will be more than enough.

I won’t go into too many details about the audio quality. The CS43198 DAC is used in many other devices and is reliable, producing excellent audio, so it’s a known quantity. The bass is very clean sounding good sub-bass extension and note weight. The midrange has excellent balance, with good vocal and instrument separation and a smooth, rich sound quality. The treble is well extended, is airy and provides sparkle when needed, and is not fatiguing at all. Overall the sound is very smooth and balanced, exactly what you want in a sub-$200 digital audio player.

The JM21 doesn’t restrain or expand the soundstage either, instead, the properties of each headphone and IEM are preserved. The same goes for imaging performance.

As you can tell, for under $200 (the MSRP is set at $199, but I’ve seen the JM21 as low as $170 USD) you get a lot. Good sound, good performance, and support for 3rd party apps as the OS is Android 13. DAPs in this price range also usually don’t come with a 4.4mm balanced connection, and the overall output power of the 4.4mm balanced and 3.5mm connections is quite high.

My main gripes with the FiiO JM21 are the lack of a physical hold button (you have the option of disabling some buttons while the screen is off, but that’s about it), the lack of a global EQ or PEQ (FiiO has said it’s coming soon in a software update, but as I like to say, don’t buy something based on future promises), and terrible playlist management of the FiiO Music app.

The only possible dealbreaker I could see for some is the lack of a global PEQ, but there are alternative options like Poweramp Equalizer that can do the job just fine. What this means then, is the FiiO JM21 is not just a great budget DAP for aspiring audiophiles and casual listeners, but is a great low-cost option for seasoned hobbyists looking for the perfect travel device. FiiO did an excellent job with the JM21, and I feel it has put the rest of the audio industry on notice of what can be accomplished at this price.

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