HIFIMAN SuperMini High-Res Portable Player

Worth it for the amplifier alone. Tons of power and very good sound.It's not perfect- with very good headphones you can hear some shortcomings in the texture of the high end. But, it sounds very, very good and you'd need to spend a few times the price of this unit to do any better. And if you did, you still might not have as powerful an amplifier.The built-in amp is stunningly powerful for a portable device, and when using a balanced cable, it drives difficult cans remarkably well. It drives the HifiMan HE400S planar magnetics with relative ease.It isn't as good sounding or nearly as powerful as my desktop Cavalli Hybrid Tube Amp, but what portable player is?It does drive my HE400S and HE400i much better than my two USB dongle DAC/AMPs, the astounding HifiMe Sabre 9018 DAC and the very good Dragonfly Red. It can even get respectably decent (but not optimal) performance out of the notoriously difficult AKG K701 at lower levels.Via the single-ended headphone jack, the power is less but still well above most portable DAPs. It is an extremely good match for the Sennheiser PX100 (Original Version) which was always lacking a bit to me in heft from my other portables. I find myself enjoying the daylights out of those phones when they had been stuffed in a drawer in favor of Grados and PortaPros for a decade.I ordered mine via Amazon and the seller was the manufacturer itself, Hifiman. The item I received appeared used, and had somebody's MicroSD card installed in it with almost 2000 songs, most of which had Chinese characters for song titles. There were some log files from CD ripping that indicated the rips were done by a user in China. I suspect perhaps someone at the factory was "enjoying" one of these players before it was boxed up for sale.However, I contacted the manufacturer, and I received prompt support. They sent me a brand new player immediately along with a paid return shipping label. The email replies were always prompt, attentive, and professional. I have seen other reviews critiquing the manufacturer's support, but my experience was quite good.Included IEMs are mediocre.Bottom line is, if sound quality and the ability to drive more demanding headphones is your top priority, this is by far the best deal in its price range. You can do better, but you'll spend 3-5 times more to get there. To get the most out of this player, you really ought to get a good pair of balanced headphones.

I got this yesterday & there is a learning curve, so I will save you a lot of time & frustration. Your micro SD card must be formatted to the old FAT32 which the device will do for you. They have a firmware update which you download then put it on the micro SD card & boot up the device. It then seems to see it & upgrade (I think...). I formatted a new 64 gig card then put it in my iMac & clicked & dragged about a zillion Album folders from the iTunes Music folder. Formatting the card creates a folder called MUSIC: this is where you click & drag the music folders or individual songs.All of my music is Apple Lossless ripped using iTunes.When you install your micro SD card the device says "No music found" so I went into the settings a selected "update database" then the songs were available.I must tell you that you need to go to HiFiMan.com to see the PDF user manual which gives you only the basics. The device does not come with a manual.The device does come with in ear monitors which use the "balanced output" & the sound is outstanding. I am also using the super excellent Cardas A8 in ear monitors in the regular phone jack & the sound is EXTREMELY good. With this combination it is hard to stop listening. I also use the HiFiMan 400s headphones with great sound.Once in a while the device locks up the use of track selection & volume control for about 2 minutes but the music keeps playing from song to song.Here is the conclusion & the BOTTOM LINE: Considering that this has the sound equaling Astell & Kern for a $1000 less I am very happy. Dr Fang Bian is a brilliant designer & a really nice person that I am able to visit with at the HiFi shows for several years. It just keeps getting better for us budget music lovers. Buy this & find out how great it sounds!! Keep a micro fiber cloth handy to keep the screen fingerprint free.*** Update After listening for another day I like the SuperMini better than my Chord Mojo which costs $699. The Super Mini seems to have a bigger soundstage & more detail. The mojo is larger size & requires a smart phone, tablet or computer. I am now really happy with the SuperMini & the Mojo will get sold but it was great for 6 months. The battery life on the SuperMini has been great unlike the Mojo.

Quite good value if you buy the kit (player + phones) for about $150. Original price, which was around $350 if I remember correctly was waaaaay too high and can't be excused by any feature or quality that player has.The most important thing I miss is the ability to connect via USB port to the external DAC. Would be also nice if the album cover could be displayed on a screen. I don't miss colors on a screen, monochrome is fine with me.Since this was intended as a gift, I wasn't using phones that came with it. I connected my Sennheiser HD580 headphones. Sound was pretty good. As others were saying - warm. I couldn't detect anything above about 8kHz, maybe attached phones would bring some higher trebles to life, but as I said before, I didn't try them.Edit: I had the opportunity to listen to that player later with some other phones (IEMs) and it turns out, that there's plenty of treble with good extension. It just depends on what kind of phones are connected.

I have now had this product for a while and taken my time considering how to review it.Pros: long battery life, plays hifi formats, can power my he560, simple interface i can use without looking at, sound amazing.Cons: difficult to get sd card to stay in the first time, when trying to listen to a song you just listened to it will jump to a ransom file and pause, some times randomly jumps to a randome file and pauses, Does not always play supported flac file formats at the higher end, idle power off seems not to work.I use this thing 10 hours a day 4 days a week. It holds up well and is a solid player. I hope i can get my hands on there better players and give them a go.

I am going back and reviewing products purchased in the past. This is a great sounding DAP and even includes a pair of balanced earbuds. I also love the compact size. My issue is that the menu and navigation are very basic and clunky. I also had trouble getting this player to recognize some formats like AIFF.

I ordered this very close to the first shipment time and was pleased to receive it in less than a week direct from China. This may well be the portable Hi-End/Hi-Res player to get in 2016. The sound is stellar on full resolution FLAC files. The combination of truly miniature size (MINI) and long battery life make this a pleasure to use. No range anxiety here (Tesla reference!). It seems quite able to drive full size headphones which is another huge benefit. If you like the idea of the Fiio M3 (48k/24b limited) but want full audiophile support including DSD but still want small size and long battery life then the HiFiMan Mini is the player to get. Also, I really like the no nonsense menu system. This appears to be a very well thought through product. Highly recommended.

Bought it three months ago to have really portative audio. X5-2 being better in SQ is too big for jeans pockets.Pros: Decent sound. No jokes. For such a small DAP it's just great. Battery life is also surprisingly good.Cons: Design. This frameless screen is just fragile. See picture. 3 months in pocket and hard case I'm using for transporting my audio stuff. X3, X5, several sansa clips and ZX1 survived this pretty well. But not this SuperMini. Interface is a bit slow and, and I'm missing settings - but nothing really disapointing.Conclusion: Good DAP, but fragile screen makes it useless for me.PS. Headphones that comes with it aren't too bad, but nothing really special.

I bought a 256GB sc card with this player and loaded it up with music, put it in the player and got really to rockThen I notice two things (1) not all my music was showing up and (2) the songs in the albums I could see were not in orderI double checked the files on the sc card and all the music was there and songs in order.I contacted HiFiman tech support and they said the player can only handle 6,000 songs which my seem a lot but for me it’s notI ask how can a player handle a 256 GB sc card but only hold 6,000 song. We are talking about over 20,000 songs on a card that sizeI would look elsewhere for a player, this one doesn’t make any sense.It seemed like a nice player but this minimum song capacity is a joke

Big audio quality in such a small device coming with nice balanced headphones with dynamic driver in a badge.User interface simple and clear.

The item I received was a MegaMini, not a "SuperMini" as listed. It is silver and not black, the device only has a headphone jack, no balanced line out, and there were no included headphones. The photos and title in the listing are wrong. Do not buy.

This thing is a huge turd. It literally worked for 1 night! Tried to turn it on the next day.. won't get past the start up screen. Then to top it off the headphones don't work. Thanks a ton HIFIMAN.....

.This is the best sounding unit for 200.00, highly recommended. Check out the magazine reviews like Sound and Vision.

Just arrived and it's damaged. The back is completely detached and the battery is so bloated the back won't even fit on. Will change my review if replaced with a properly working model.

Pros: Maybe a better Digital Music Player (DAP) function than a smart phone. A pocket drive in a pinch. You can determine the money you want to spend for memory. Drag and drop on a 'disk' image - no music manager required. Balanced headphones in the box. Good macOS support. Easy firmware updates. More than 8-hour battery time. Designed for left-handed people.Cons: Just buy the MegaMini and pocket the $100 difference. Maybe too musically 'polite' for some. Does not support many music formats common on macOS (AAC, AIF 24-bit). Micro USB in an age of USB-C? Does one really need to spend an extra $100 on the SuperMini for a balanced phono jack? Doesn't have a music manager so I must convert my AIF 24-bit master files to FLAC manually. Needed an easy firmware update out of the box. Doesn't get the claimed 22-hour run time on a charge with decent headphones. Website support page needs professional attention. Designed for left-handed people.TL:DR (This is almost a cut and paste from my HIFIMAN MegaMini review because - it is almost the same experience.) On balance of the pros and cons, it may look like I don't like this unit; however, it is almost the right balance of price/size/performance. The experience seems like a step back to circa 1990's DAPs like the iJam and iRiver; however, it might do a better job than many smart phones in most regards and offers some solutions missing from your phone. Like FLAC. It does FLAC; Apple products do not without help.Design: The package is an attractive, heavy duty box with the pretty, monolithic SuperMini well padded inside. Also in the box are fairly clear (if incomplete) instructions, a micro USB charging cable and some HIFIMAN balanced in-ear monitors (IEM). While MegaMini seemed like metallized-plastic, the SuperMini has an aluminum front and sides, the back still seems like plastic membrane.Sound: My 'audiophile' depth is limited to 3 levels because I don't do double-blind testing: Wow, okay and WTH is THAT? I listened through both a pair of included balanced HIFIMAN IEMs and ThinkSound ON2 and found the sound better than my smartphone but not tremendously detailed. Some music details, like higher registers of a mouth harmonica, (Amanda McBroom/Lincoln Mayorga: Hooray For Hollywood Town - Peter the Hermit) can almost vanish amidst other instruments. Voice and guitar can become one sound when they are both present. (Grateful Dead: Workingman's Dead - Uncle John's Band) No matter what I was listening with, I didn't notice a great deal of imaging happening other than 'Left, Right and Center.' I felt the sound was too balanced to be exciting and not detailed enough to surprise me with new details about the tracks. Instruments can disappear when the music is complex. When I played through some Sennheiser HD-580, which have a 300ohm impedance, I was impressed that the SuperMini could deliver listenable audio levels on that hungry beast; however, details just started being revealed with the volume set to 27 on the 1-32 scale. (It's doubtful a headphone with more than 350ohm impedance can ever come to full bloom with these DAPs.) The bass improved and the sound was more involving with the Sennheiser. If I'm not being picky and don't think about churning through the battery, I could live with the HD-580/HIFIMAN combo while doing something besides critical listening. I would also say the newer Sennheisers (HD-600/HD-650) with lesser impedance might make a good pairing but my other transducers were just 'okay.' And here is 'my thing' about this...Marketing: The HIFIMAN website makes it look like this unit can drive 'almost' any set of cans, that is why I replaced my new MegaMini with the SuperMini. I doubt the SuperMini can deliver on that promise. The amp was set at the same level as the Mega for the same headphones. They both support the same file formats and sound almost the same to my average ears. Differences I see are the inclusion of a balanced headphone jack on the SuperMini, (I'm not sold on the tech of balanced headphones) more run-time on its battery, and an extra $100.Conclusion: I'd rank the (1) AudioQuest Black Dragonfly on my iPhone, the (2) MegaMini, and the (3) SuperMini for myself. I'd pick the Dragonfly for its excitement and musical involvement every time; however, the HIFIMAN units are far more pocket friendly, even though they are another thing to carry. Also, I felt these HIFIMAN DAPs gave a more balanced representation of the music; that might count for someone else more than it does for me. Ultimately the MegaMini at $99 was money well spent, but $199 for the SuperMini? Not so much. And certainly not worth the original asking price before the reduction. Unless you have an Armani suit; then you might like a SuperMini to match.

Long time Hifiman fan here (owned HM801, HM602, HM601 and HM700 players)FIRST IMPRESSION: POSITIVEThe Supermini sounds more similar to the famous Chord Mojo than any of my previous Hifiman players (which makes sense since they both use the same technology)However, the mojo sounds noticeably better. The obvious difference is that the low frequencies go deeper and have more weight and texture. The Mojo also has more micro details distributed accros the entire frequency band therefore providing a better 3D layering and imaging.In comparison, the Supermini sounded a little stripped down and I often found myself raising the volume to compensate for a lack of something.FURTHER IMPRESSIONS (1 year later)The Supermini is still no slouch and sounds different enough from most smartphones to provide a noticeably different experience. Mainly, more effortless sound with homph and soundstage smartphones lack.I enjoyed the supermini most with low key instrumental electronic (psybient, lounge...) music and high end 320 ohms earphones in balanced mode. It was great.But for most other music styles (especially genre relying heavily on acoustic instruments and voices), the Supermini often sounded a little lacking excitement and micro details.LAST BUT NOT LEASTGlitches. While Hifiman has never been a reference for UI stability, I have never experienced as many freeze and lags before. Worse, every time I ejected a card, the player would no longer recognize it.(the replacement unit Hifiman sent me behaved the same)CONCLUSIONThe Supermini shows good potential for the generations to come but as of now, its real name should be Superbuggy.Despite being often described as "musical", I actually find it the least enjoyable/natural sounding of all Hifiman players I've owned. I still reach for one of my older HM601 or HM602 (non over sampling DAC) any day I want a good analog sound.