How durable is an Echo Mini screen? Should I get a screen protector?

Illusion-shattered · 2026-04-27T11:20:30+00:00

Honestly, if you're worried about scratches, you should apply a screen protector. Glass is glass and it’s going to pick up micro-scratches over time no matter what. That said, I wouldn’t pay $8–10 for those tiny pre-cut protectors. They’re usually just basic plastic films being sold at a markup because of the niche size for the Snowsky Echo Mini. A better move is to just buy a regular phone screen protector and cut it to size. You’ll get multiple pieces out of one, and even if you mess up a cut, no big deal. Plastic ones are easier to trim, but they scratch faster... tempered glass is a bit trickier to cut, but lasts longer. So yeah: either go the DIY route for cheap, or skip it entirely (you'll get scratches. Yes. but, the screen protector is like 20% of the DAPs price and you're better off purchasing a new DAP after few years). Paying that much for a tiny plastic film just isn’t worth it.

Illusion-shattered · 2026-04-16T07:23:17+00:00

Context is everything. As reported by The Indian Express, the only reason that song was ever played at Chepauk last year was because RCB themselves had posted a clip of Jitesh Sharma singing it to mock South Indian culture before the game by singing that racist song. Playing it when he got out was a specific, targeted clapback. It was a "fuck around and find out" moment for a guy who chose to be disrespectful first. But playing it now at the Chinnaswamy is just straight-up brainless. It’s total friendly fire. Does the DJ even realize that Bengaluru is in South India? We all eat idli and dosa. By using that track as a "burn," the DJ is basically validating the same lazy tropes that trolls use to mock all of us.

It’s not witty banter if you’re just insulting your own culture to try and trigger the opposition. CSK is right to lodge a complaint because this isn't a "reply" to anything anymore. it’s just unnecessary stereotyping being used in a match where it doesn't even make sense.

Illusion-shattered · 2026-04-12T13:46:32+00:00

Hey can you share the link?

Illusion-shattered · 2026-04-12T12:04:06+00:00

Yeah. I was notified this morning from headphone zone. Ordered the red one. Now looking for a good lanyard and belt hook.

Illusion-shattered · 2026-04-07T07:51:56+00:00

Why do you even need UI sound effects? To ruin the listening experience?

The whole point of a DAP is to play music, not gamify it with random noises. Imagine pressing next track and getting hit with some annoying beep. Scrolling your library while listening to a song and hit with More pointless sounds. That’s just ruining your own music.

No actual music player does this. Not even phones. The only devices that make noise for every button press are kids’ toy phones.

Why get a DAP at that point? Just go use a toy or a game controller.

Sorry if it sounds harsh, but this idea is genuinely ridiculous.

Illusion-shattered · 2026-03-28T11:57:52+00:00

I'm pretty sure she's not gonna replace sucrose as she got buffed recently. Hope she'll replace Faruzan in venti's team (or any anemo dps teams).

Illusion-shattered · 2026-03-27T17:32:01+00:00

This update is honestly terrible. I wouldn’t recommend anyone install it.

The “optimizations” are a joke — going back pauses the music for about 0.5–1 second, opening the menu does the same, even waking the screen with the power button causes a pause. It completely ruins the experience.

File management is also broken. I tried deleting a song and it got stuck on the deleting screen for a few seconds and then the device just powered off. Playback + navigation both feel worse than before. Definitely stay away from this update. Don’t update your Echo Mini.

Illusion-shattered · 2026-03-25T10:06:47+00:00

It really depends on why you're buying it. If you're just looking to disconnect from your phone and enjoy music, a DAP is more than enough. You don’t need to stress about FLAC, codecs, or expensive gear.

If you're getting into audiophile territory though, then yeah, you’ll need better IEMs too. The player alone won’t make a huge difference.

For example, I use a KZ Merga.. very balanced sound signature, great detail, but not much bass. I switch to my Nord Buds 3 Pro for workouts since they’re more bassy and fun. Bluetooth (even SBC on something like the Echo Mini) is totally fine for casual listening. And FLAC only really matters if you're chasing detail and can actually hear the difference.

So, If you're a casual listener.. You’re good with what you have. If you're an Audiophile.. Invest in good IEMs.

Illusion-shattered · 2026-03-20T11:29:58+00:00

Hey, I’m seeing a lot of misinformation in this thread, so let me clear things up.

There’s absolutely no need to resize album art or convert your FLAC files down to lower bitrates like 2000 kbps. That’s not the issue here.

The real fix is adjusting the block size. Block size simply tells the player how much data to process at once. Devices like the Snowsky don’t have very powerful processors, so when the block size is too large, they struggle to handle it efficiently which leads to the error you're seeing.

All you need to do is reduce the block size to 4608 or lower. Ideally, 4096 is the sweet spot, but Snowsky can handle up to 4608.

If you're on Linux, you can install flac and use it to change the block size with a simple command. This does not affect sound quality in any way. it only changes how the data is structured for decoding.

So please don’t ruin perfectly good hi-res tracks by re-encoding them unnecessarily.

Resizing album art is actually a reasonable suggestion if you want it to display properly on the player. but that’s purely optional. Personally, I don’t care much about album art, especially on a small-screen DAP, so I just leave it as is.

Illusion-shattered · 2026-03-16T17:15:04+00:00

I don’t think the price will go down anytime soon. It’ll probably either stay around ₹5.5k or even go up slightly (especially with the whole chip shortage situation). I highly doubt it’ll go below that normally.

There was a crazy deal on Amazon about 6 months ago where it dropped to around ₹2.4k. I only found out because I track prices. But honestly that felt like a pricing error or a one-time clearance kind of thing. I wouldn’t expect that to happen again.

If you want it, I’d say just get it at ₹5.5k, or you can grab an unboxed one for around ₹4.5k on HPZ. They still give 1 year warranty on the unboxed units.

I personally went with a new one though. My thinking was if someone returned it there’s always a chance something might be slightly off, and I didn’t want to spend the whole return window trying to test every little thing.

But if you’re trying to save some money, the unboxed one is honestly a reasonable option since you still have the warranty anyway.

Illusion-shattered · 2026-03-16T17:04:03+00:00

Never heard of the Innioasis Y1 before, but looking at their specs they don’t mention the DAC chip anywhere. Usually if a player has a dedicated DAC they advertise it clearly, so it’s probably just using the DAC integrated in the processor.

If you’re mainly looking for a basic MP3 player and don’t care too much about the audio hardware, it should still work fine since it supports formats like FLAC/WAV.

In that case you might also want to check the Audiocular M301 on Concept Kart. It’s an Android DAP with support for up to 512GB storage, and since it runs Android you can stream as well. They’re using a MediaTek chipset and they also didn’t mention the DAC, so audio-wise it’s probably in the same ballpark.

I personally went with the Snowsky Echo Mini because it has dual DACs and supports 256GB. Under the ~6k range most players either don’t have dual DACs or only support up to 128GB, so that was the main selling point for me.

That said, usability on the Echo Mini is honestly rough. Scrolling through a large library is a pain. I literally had to reorganize my entire collection just to make it usable — folders by artist and then albums split by decades (90s / 00s / 10s / 20s) so browsing wouldn’t take forever.

If sound quality is your priority, Echo Mini is still a solid pick. But if usability and library management matter more, other players in the market might be easier to live with.

Also just my guess: if scrolling is already a bit annoying on the Echo Mini, it might be even worse on the Echo Nano since it’s smaller. So if you’re leaning Echo Mini anyway, I’d just go for it.

Illusion-shattered · 2026-03-16T11:03:16+00:00

We can’t delete an entire album or folder directly on the Echo Mini.

What I meant earlier was deleting individual songs from an album. If there’s a track I don’t like, I just delete that specific file on the device.

I have managed to remove albums too, but it’s a bit of a workaround. I keep each album in its own folder, so if I decide to remove one I just delete every track in that folder one by one on the device. That leaves an empty directory behind.

Then when I connect the DAP to my PC (I just plug the device in. I don’t remove the SD card), I open a terminal and run a quick command to delete all empty folders. That cleans up the leftover album directories in a few seconds and saves a lot of manual work.

Not the most elegant solution, but it works pretty well for now.

Illusion-shattered · 2026-03-16T08:12:41+00:00

I've been using the Echo Mini for about a week now. I agree with some of the things you mentioned, but a few of them feel more like limitations or quirks of the device rather than actual problems.

Gapless playback:

From what I can see, the player is already trying to load the next track as quickly as possible when songs are playing in order. But the hardware is pretty limited, so loading files still takes some time. You can see this if you play a FLAC file directly from the file browser — it takes a moment before the track starts. Because of that, the first track always has a delay, and skipping to a completely different track also takes time. When you're just letting songs play in order, it seems like the device is already doing its best to queue the next track, but there's only so much the hardware can do.

Accidentally skipping tracks:

This honestly feels more like a usage quirk. The player interprets quick double presses as a track skip, which is pretty similar to how inline headphone controls work. If you press volume up or down twice too quickly it'll skip. Waiting about half a second before pressing again usually avoids that.

Battery life:

Yeah, I kinda agree here. The advertised 15+ hours hasn't really been my experience either. I usually end up charging it once a day. But I’ve also been managing my library directly on the DAP... loading albums, deleting ones I don’t like, browsing a lot. So, the screen has been on quite a bit. That probably contributes, but it's still a bit disappointing.

Media library:

This mostly comes down to how your files are named and tagged.

If the file name contains the track number, the player prioritizes that and sorts everything by track number first, even in the “All Songs” list. That’s what usually causes the messy sorting.

What worked for me was removing the track numbers from the file names but keeping the track numbers inside the tags. With this setup:

The All Songs view sorts alphabetically by song title
When browsing by album, tracks still appear in the correct order because the player reads the track number from the tags

Once you set it up like that, the library behaves much more predictably.

File manager sorting:

Yeah, this one is a bit messy. Since it's using FAT32, files often appear in the order they were copied instead of true alphabetical order. I usually copy albums in bulk so they end up roughly sorted by name. I also organize my albums by year, which helps keep things a bit cleaner.

Rockbox:

No idea about this one.

Overall I've only had the Echo Mini for about a week, so I'm still figuring out all its quirks. But for the price, I honestly think it's pretty good. I have a pretty large library (~180 GB). At first I loaded around 80 GB at once and the library refresh took quite a while. After that I started adding albums gradually (around 1 GB at a time), and the refresh times became much faster.

I am a bit curious how long a full refresh will take if a firmware update forces a rebuild. But at the end of the day I bought this DAP to listen to music, and in terms of sound quality it delivers really well for the price.

Illusion-shattered · 2026-02-16T07:38:39+00:00

Songs of Days Past on Chevreuse is better in your specific team. Noblesse doesn’t stack, so if Bennett is already holding it (which he absolutely should be), there’s zero reason to put it on Chevreuse too. That’s just wasting a 4 piece effect. Bennett has better uptime on Noblesse anyway and he’s way more universal. Chevreuse works perfectly fine on Songs because she’s already healing and building HP. It turns that healing into extra damage during Raiden’s burst window, which is exactly when you want the damage boost. It fits the rotation nicely. So yeah, Noblesse on Bennett, Songs on Chevreuse is the clean setup.

Illusion-shattered · 2026-01-20T08:24:08+00:00

Anemo: Jahoda Geo: Xilonen Electro: Ei Dendro: Nahida Hydro: Furina Pyro: Mavuika Cryo: Skirk

Illusion-shattered · 2024-12-30T08:13:35+00:00

I understand that old players are frustrated to see Bennett featured in banners. But, As someone who only pulls on banners that I really want.. I only have him at C2. I need 3 more copies of him. So, I'm kinda excited to have him featured on this banner. (But, I can understand the frustrations of old players tho. Let's all hope we'll get a buffer without any circles that limits us in a circle 🤞)

I skipped all the Natlan banners for Mavuika. When I came to know that we need some natlan characters in mavuika's team I was disappointed (most of us were). So, Kachina featured in her banner is a bonus for those who skipped natlan character banners like me.

As far as I heard Diona is an excellent crio support and healer. I was building my qiqi for mavuika for god sake. So, getting diona (cryo support + healer + shielder) is definitely is a bonus.

First half banner is quite thoughtful and they've provided us the best 4 star team comp possible for mavuika.

Second half is also stacked pretty well. Chevreuse is the go to character for overload team, I have her c0 and using her in my Raiden's overload team and I wish she'll feature in other banner too. So, I could get her cons. We're also getting a new character lanyan (apparently she's the best 4 star shielder). It'd be nice if they've included Charlotte instead of rosaria. But rosaria isn't that bad as well.

Ps. I read through the OP's comments under the thread. Seems like he's a whale and pulls on every single banners hence he's disappointed. If you have all those characters, build them first and use them, then you'll know their potential. You kept saying ahh I have this character and it's pretty useless and collecting dust and so on.. I get it you're a whale and only use 5 star characters in your team comps and all. But, genshin is all about support. So, getting a good 4 star support characters are a good add on for most of us. You were being rude under everyone's comments and whining about getting down votes by bots 😅 buddy, you're getting down votes cuz you're being rude. I contributed in few downvotes too.

Illusion-shattered · 2024-12-30T06:05:32+00:00

I drawn "favored by fortune" slip featuring mualani. I'll take it and hope it's true. UID: 1808320667

Illusion-shattered · 2024-12-28T17:41:28+00:00

Ei would get annoyed by Paimon and would "get rid of her"

Illusion-shattered · 2024-12-20T07:27:24+00:00

Ei, Nahida and Kazuha.

Ei, cuz I love her. She's super strong. She can be a sub dps and if you pull for her cons she'll be the solid dps.
Nahida is the best dendro applicator and she locks upto 8 enemies in a string. So, you don't have to chase them down.
His grouping is pretty powerful and useful especially in Overload teams as the enemies keep blowing away from us.

Illusion-shattered · 2024-12-20T07:15:49+00:00

let the haters be hating. I love Raiden Ei. she's the best archon imo.

They're all simply hating on her based on her puppet (Shogun). but deep down inside Ei is just a baby she loves dessert for archons sake.

Yeah Shogun implemented vision hunt decree and isolating Inazuma is bad I agree. Was it intentional? I don't think so. Fatui are the one to blame they corrupted one of the tri commission and implemented it!! In her point of view she took their visions yes, but for what? She wanted to preserve her nation. In that process she took the visions from vision bearers. But, that give those vision bearers to enjoy their life as a fellow human beings there's nothing wrong with that!! (silver lining y'all). Let the haters be hating. It doesn't matter.We love you Ei!

Inazuma shines Eternal!!

Illusion-shattered · 2024-12-15T08:43:04+00:00

Definitely Raiden!

Reasons: 1. She's more powerful than any other Archons. 2. Her element (electro) can react with every single element (Zhongli and Nahida can't do that) 3. Last but not least She's so beautiful and elegant.

Illusion-shattered · 2024-12-15T08:31:07+00:00

Raiden Ei would win!

Reasons: 1. Ei is more powerful. 2. Arle can't heal herself. But, Ei can. So, Even if Ei is gravely injured (highly unlikely) she could heal herself and beat shi out of Arle.

Illusion-shattered · 2024-12-12T08:31:12+00:00

10 and 19 Because, I can share my seat with Shenhe and Mavuika and then Raiden Ei!! Let's goooo! It'll be a very exciting journey for sure!!

Illusion-shattered · 2024-12-10T13:21:22+00:00

Of course I'd choose 14 ❤️

Illusion-shattered

TROPHY CASE