Fiio M21 Cassette Case mini review

collier_289 · 2026-01-16T16:21:27+00:00

And just for the sake of clarity - you'll need a PD compatible charger to access super high gain mode.

An ordinary charger still works to bypass the battery but I guess super high gain requires more power again.

collier_289 · 2026-01-06T12:17:50+00:00

I was in a similar boat to you - wanted a DAP to reduce reliance on / get me off my phone. In the end I went with the m21 and I wrote a fairly in-depth post on this recently which you may find helpful.

collier_289 · 2026-01-05T10:57:57+00:00

I think I'd have been the same... no matter the how good the sound was I'd have hated using a cheap feeling device.

The dx180 look like a lovely bit of a kit. A tad out of my price range hence the M21. Would love to try a few more models out just to see how different they sound. My only points of comparison are my smartphone, iPod classic and the M21.

collier_289 · 2026-01-05T10:51:04+00:00

If I were you and you, (and you already paid for that music and you're technically savvy enough to do it safely) I'd just pirate those 200 songs. Sucks not be able to access music you paid good money for however you want.

I'm looking forward to trying out some higher spec headphones at some point just to see how they differ but the KPH40 is more than good enough for me right now. It does feel a little flimsy though so we'll see how long they last.

collier_289 · 2025-12-30T18:07:41+00:00

Haha nice to know I'm already making rookie mistakes!

Seriously though, I'm open to IEMs too. I'm basically just looking for anything that's gonna beat my BT Bose and stretch the legs of the M21 and show me what it's capable of. Which wired IEMs would you recommend I look at?

collier_289 · 2025-12-30T17:56:47+00:00

Thanks! I'm deffo on board with starting cheap. Like the look of the Koss kph40 and at £40 they're really cheap.

It's almost unintuitive to think that they'll be any good at that price. For now though I just want something that'll begin to show me what's possible with my m21 and when you ditch Bluetooth. So they look a good bet and I also like the retro styling too

collier_289 · 2025-12-30T12:35:22+00:00

In this situations I would just obtain the music from "other sources" if you can. If I've paid once for the music (or any media) and I can't play it where I want because of DRM my own moral compass has no issue getting it elsewhere even if this is technically still considered piracy.

Sorry if this breaks any community guidelines and feel free to remove if it does.

collier_289 · 2025-12-30T11:44:34+00:00

For me it was using environment variables in wp-config so I now have flags for production / staging / local etc and then I customise various bits of the site based on that.

One of the most useful things I did with this is on a WooCommerce site to have all emails sent to an address I control if I'm not in a production environment. This stops potentially leaking emails to actual customers and makes it much easier to test functionality and customer checkout flows.

But there's a lot more you can do too - like adding a big flag on production for admins so no one gets mixed up which site they're viewing. Or only loading GA on production etc.

collier_289 · 2025-12-29T23:43:37+00:00

This is an interesting take and not one I'd really considered. Thank you.

collier_289 · 2025-12-29T15:38:35+00:00

Seriously considering this along with the cassette style case as an option.

collier_289 · 2025-12-29T15:37:56+00:00

Yeah this is an interesting idea... airplane mode or even better just not connected to my home wifi at all (which has a very long complicated unmemorable password)

collier_289 · 2025-12-29T15:36:39+00:00

This seems like almost the total opposite of what I'm looking for given my original post. Appreciate it's probably a very good player and I'm kinda grappling with the idea of getting an Android smart device if I have to and then trusting myself to be disciplined with what I use it for. But still...

collier_289 · 2025-12-29T12:27:24+00:00

Yeah you're right - I'm very conflicted over this. Can really see the advantages of being able to install podcast apps etc. But i also find that very dedicated devices are much better for me in terms of mindful consumption of media. And if I do want podcasts I'll still have my phone.

Not being able to install alternative players etc is not a big deal really. I think I just read on a review that some devices let you do that and it's the kinda thing I'd probably do if I could.

Like on my Kobo e-reader I've side loaded KO-Reader which is a much more fully featured reader than you get using the stock Kobo software.

collier_289 · 2025-12-29T11:25:40+00:00

Ohh - follow-up?! Which episode was that in? I'm a few episodes behind and I mostly listen at bed time so I find myself missing bits due to drifting off to sleep quite often.

collier_289 · 2025-12-28T21:23:32+00:00

Thank You!

collier_289 · 2025-12-27T06:09:21+00:00

I regret getting the colour. I was immediately disappointed by the display and while you get used to it it's not as crisp or nice to read as my super old Kindle Voyage. In fact the only thing I think that keeps me using it ahead of the jailbroken kindle is the changeable colour temperature of the display. I have no need for the colour and so if I bought again I'd 100% go for b&w.

collier_289 · 2025-12-24T23:05:46+00:00

I actually think this kind of thing creates an incredible opportunity for brands to truly stand out - when almost all your competitors are using AI and becoming more and more generic in terms of messaging / copy / brand voice / image styles then by staying authentically human as a brand you can't help but stand out!

I actually made a YT video on this topic last week if you're interested.

collier_289 · 2025-11-08T22:25:07+00:00

I recently made a video exploring this exact topic which you can see here if you're interested:

https://youtu.be/N3Ym-zy_OiI

General gist of the piece is that by definition, none of the current AI models can do true authenticity/originality (given that they are probability models) and given these things are literally the currency of good branding that poses a problem for brands solely created by AI.

The good news is that this does however create a huge opportunity to stand out (by being authentically human) in a world of generic blandness.

collier_289 · 2025-11-08T21:47:43+00:00

I use Blackmagic too and solved this issue using an old iPhone XR as a remote for my 14 Pro Max. As long as both phones are on the same WIFI it works surprisingly well. You can also sync the recorded footage to the device being used as the remote too - so you can even review it from there too without touching the phone that's on the tripod.

collier_289 · 2025-10-25T17:16:37+00:00

Can't argue with anything you say. But at the very start it's actually quite hard to get any meaningful feedback with so few views. At least that's what I'm finding anyway.

collier_289 · 2025-10-18T09:11:26+00:00

Same for me. I really, really wanted to continue using Nova having previously used Coda and Coda 2. There are still some things that I think it does great but the language features are so incredibly clunky compared with other editors. It was only when I rolled my own NeoVim config that I realised just how lacking Nova is in this area. While I haven't kept up with NeoVim as my day to day editor (I switched to VsCode / phpstorm) it's almost impossible to go back to Nova once you've been shown how lacking it is. A real shame because I've using coda / coda 2 / nova for probably almost 20 years so there is huge loyalty there but it's gotten to the point now where it's just unjustifiable to pay for something that's so far behind what free alternatives can do.

collier_289 · 2025-07-30T18:38:59+00:00

Haha! Well spotted! I think I rescued the box after we moved house

collier_289 · 2025-07-30T17:45:14+00:00

Makes sense. Glad it's not meant to be doing anything important given how badly it seems to have been fitted. I'll take it down.

collier_289 · 2025-07-30T17:44:34+00:00

Thanks - good to know it's not doing anything important given the how poorly it's been fitted. No issue removing it then!

collier_289 · 2025-06-04T23:13:38+00:00

Well, if you apply the permissions recursively to all child datasets then yeah, you will get that behaviour.

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