FiiO Snowsky Disc Pure Music Player Review – Teal Winter Oracle
FiiO Snowsky Disc is a $99 USD pure music player designed for portable enjoyment of music, with one rounded display at the heart, touchscreen and physical buttons to control playback, and both single ended and balanced headphone outputs to power IEMs and easy to drive headphones. The full product name is F5381D.
Introduction
FiiO continues their adventure with the Snowsky brand, now Disc being the center of our review today. This is a response to the growth of demand for mini DAPs, and seeing how popular models are in the mini portable market, Snowsky Disc feels a bit like a rebirth of the iPod nano but with a far better ergonomic and build quality, and a far better sound. You can purchase FiiO products from electronics shops, Amazon, Aliexpress and many outlets, as they are now one of the most popular brands producing personal audio devices.
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Product Link
Amazon – https://amzn.to/4tJnGun
Aliexpress – https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_c4kSFEk3
Build Quality – Design
At the core of the Snowsky Disc sits a round touchscreen, a pretty novel feature that I don’t think I’ve seen too many times in my 10 years of reviewing products. Disc tries to emulate the feeling of using a CD Player, but smaller and more playful. It comes in colorful variations like blue pink and also a more serious black variant.
With a chasis made of aluminium, and a silky smooth finish, FiiO Disc feels refined and high-quality. It also features two headphone outputs, both 3.5mm single ended and 4.4mm balanced outputs, with LDAC and Bluetooth 5.4 support as well as a neat Dual CS43131 DAC combo at the core, and a high 280mW of maximum output power. FiiO knows just how important personal audio is, so Disc comes with 8 EQ modes and multiple filters, being powered by an efficient X2000 Dual-Core chip and Linux based OS, supporting microSD cards up to 2 tB.
Despite its size, it has a medium battery inside, and at 1450 mAh that battery gives Disc a playtime of up to 12 hours of music playback, having support for Gain Control, Screen Rotation, OTA Firmware update, USB DAC, USB output, Coaxial Output, Roon and Airplay, and multiple buttons on the sides to control it. Physically, Disc is a lightweight DAP with a 77.2 grams body, it has a 1.8″ LCD with a 360 x 360 display that is fully laminated, and the quoted power output is 280mW per channel for the balanced output and 125mW per channel for the SE output.
Subjective Usage
I generally don’t like mini DAPs that much, because they are usually designed to try to do far more than the space and display allows, and are very hard to browse and control. FiiO picked up on that, as I’m not the only one who finds it frustrating having to browse the menus on a small screen, so they made the new FiiO Disc with a decently large display, enough to browse and read it.
Although the display does not feel as sharp as the display on FiiO M21, it is plenty sharp and usually I cannot see individual pixels, especially from a normal reading distance. Furthermore, it is a very sharp display with plenty of color and no blue cast or particular color tint. The USB DAC feature works nicely, but to engage it you have to go into the settings, as otherwise, it will start charging when a USB cable is plugged in. I was able to get a battery life of 8-9 hours with high volume, a lot of screen on time and a lot of music browsing.
There are very few menus and Snowsky Disc really does not do that much, but it does what is essential, which is play music. With FiiO’s expert team of developers, it has a few really nice features, like the fact you can rotate the display towards any direction, as this is after all a square with a circle display. It has Bluetooth and Wifi, and has gain settings on Audio, can work as a USB DAC, and can also feed data to an external DAC AMP. The USB DAC part has a DAC delay of about 50 ms to 200 ms, and it seems to change from data rate to data rate. It does not like it when you pause a sound, not a song, but when there is a bit of pause. To match the driving power with the battery life, it likely has a strong power saving feature enabled that shots off the amp circuit when nothing is playing, which causes the delay to both be present and to vary.
You can configure Airplay for streaming, which is not something I use often, but it is nice to have, besides BT. Physically, F5381D is sturdy, you can press heavily on the display without damaging it, the teal color you see in photos is very nice and cool in person, while the buttons on the sides are nice and clicky. Knocking on it has a hollow sound, which means that the battery and internals are not glued to the aluminium frame, but that is something good as it indicates you may be able to later on replace the battery. Overall, I like it a lot and it works wonderfully, but for local pure music playback, as both bluetooth and Wifi are not the fastest.
Sound Quality
Pairings – FiiO Disc has a rather low maximum power, but I paired it with both full-sized headphones and IEMs to test its limits. The list includes ThieAudio Cypher, Tin HIFI T6, Faith Audio E1000, Grell OAE2, Lily Audio Genesis One, Palma DHS-1, KBEar Cepheus, Crosszone CZ-10 Enhanced, TinHIFI T7, NFAudio NE4, Sivga Peng, Crosszone CZ-8a Enhanced, Soundz Flame, Dunu Vulkan 2, Moritz Aura, HarmonicDyne Romantic, Hiby Digital Yume, HIFIMAN Audivina LE, Westone Mach 80,BQEYZ Winter II, Fosi Audio IM4, Aune AC55
Despite its size and low price, Disc has quite a bit of power for IEMS and Earphones. It does not have the backbone for hard to drive planar magnetic headphones, but it is strong enough for IEMs and will do just fine with most IEMs.
Overall Signature – Disc has a warm, bloomy sound with a smooth, laid-back and gently rolled-off treble, wide soundstage and a focus on the lower midrange and male voices, with slightly less presence for female voices and violins / pianos. I would say that the main focus and highlight is on male voices, lower midrange, with far less emphasis on bass, treble or upper midrange. Disc wants to make music sound warm, thick and relaxed.
Bass – You get a fairly neutral bass with a slow tone to it, which makes music feel warm, slow and romantic. This is a good render for old rock and vintage music, making everything feel not overly warm or boomy, but slow and laid-back.
Midrange – Midrange has a clear lower midrange tilt which gives strength and presence to male voices, emphasizes romanticism, warmth and thickness in music and makes all songs feel a bit dark and laid-back, as it takes away some of the energy from female voices, giving way for bass guitars and low-tune instruments.
Treble – You will hear a relaxed, laid-back treble that has a considerably but gentle roll-off, with a good amount of detail, but limited presence. It will render cymbal crashes, but make them feel smooth and laid-back with a background location.
Dynamics And Textures – Dynamic range is natural, without an audible compression, although Snowsky Disc does its best to render all details, so with certain songs, it can compress the quieter parts slightly, in an effort to not lose the details. This is more evident at very quiet and very loud volumes.
Loudness Saturation Gradient – Volume is designed for IEMS, with a lot of control and very slow increase in the volume in the first parts, and in general it has a high volume control but not a very high maximum volume, as you can reach 70% of max volume even with fairly sensitive IEMs. It is clearly made for IEMS, but it has good control and low distortion at both very high and very low volumes.
Soundstage – Soundstage is natural, and although the treble is gently rolled-off, it is presented in a wide space, quite a bit far behind the midrange creating the feeling of space.
Value – Conclusion
It is hard to be pessimistic about FiiO, but I have to admit that despite being optimistic, I still somehow underestimated just how much performance they could squeeze out of the Disc DAP. This is basically one of the best mini DAPs that I reviewed, has a large enough screen to not be cumbersome, but also has a nice sound, rounded tuning, Bluetooth, USB DAC and can even feed an external DAC AMP like FiiO Q15. It is brilliant in value, costing so little yet producing such a nice result as user experience.
If you’re looking for a practical mini DAP with excellent build quality, a laid-back and relaxed sound with a gentle and rolled off treble, and a nice display, FiiO Snowsky Disc is a top choice with some of the best software out there.
PROs
- Shape is ergonomic and actually useful
- Does not need a lot of input or typing and for basic browsing the disc display is great
- High max brightness
- Sharp display where you cannot see individual pixels
- Laid-back and relaxed sound with a gentle and rolled-off treble
- Warm and fun midbass
- Vocal centric tuning with a strong emphasis on male voices
Cons
- Sound is a bit too relaxed and lower midrange centric
- USB DAC delay
Product Link
Amazon – https://amzn.to/4tJnGun
Aliexpress – https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_c4kSFEk3
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Full Playlist used for this review
We listened to more songs than those named in this playlist, but those are excellent for identifying a sonic signature. I recommend trying most of the songs from this playlist, especially if you’re searching for new music! The playlists are different for Spotify, Tidal and Youtube, and based on the songs I enjoy and are available on each!
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_cjBXGmwSHSdGcwuc_bKbBDGHL4QvYBu
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5J3oloz8Riy9LxEGenOjQ0?si=979ba4f082414be7
https://tidal.com/browse/playlist/330fd544-8e5b-4839-bd35-676b2edbb3d5
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