Is This Affordable Hi-Fi Player the Ideal Modern-Day iPod Alternative?

It costs roughly as much as an iPod Nano.

Published January 15, 2025

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Updated January 16, 2025

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Apple hasn’t sold an iPod in years. In 2017, it stopped selling the iPod Nano and Shuffle. The iPod Touch, the last of its dedicated portable music players, was officially discontinued in 2022.

If you’re looking for an iPod alternative in today’s streaming age, you might be in luck. While most portable hi-fi players are quite expensive — costing as much as a flagship smartphone (or way more) — the FiiO JM21 is different.

At $180, it’s the Chinese audio brand’s most affordable portable hi-fi player to date. Not only does it cost about as much as an iPod Nano did in the past, but it promises to fill a void that Apple’s music player left behind, too.

FiiO JM21

Portable hi-fi for modern listeners

The FiiO JM21 is a portable hi-fi player that’s roughly the size of your iPhone. In fact, it’s just a bit smaller. It has a 4.7-inch display and weighs 165 grams; for context, an iPhone 16 has a 6.1-inch display and weighs 170 grams.

FiiO’s music player is also pretty versatile. It runs an Android operating system and supports streaming apps, so you can download Apple Music, Spotify, or Tidal and listen to music just as you would on your smartphone. (Just without all the distractions of calls, texts and social media.)

It also has 32GB of internal storage — which you can expand up to 2TB with a microSD card — allowing for local playback. Thus, if you’ve ripped CDs or purchased digital albums, you can listen to those tracks, too.

An entry into hi-fi

The main appeal of the FiiO JM21 is that it promises to be a hi-fi upgrade over your iPhone or Android smartphone. It packs dual CS43198 DACs and supports high resolution up to 32-bit/384kHz (including PCM and DSD256). It has dual headphones, 3.5mm and 4.4mm (balanced), too.

Interestingly, the FiiO JM21 has built-in Bluetooth allowing you to use your wireless headphones or earbuds, too. And it supports high-resolution codecs, including aptX HD, LHDC, and LDAC, if you have wireless headphones that support those, as well.

The battery life of the FiiO JM21 is pretty good, promising up to 12 hours. It supports USB-C fast charging, too.

Price and availability

The FiiO JM21 costs $199 — although Amazon is selling it for $180 — making it one of the most affordable portable hi-fi players available. (For context, Astell&Kern is the biggest name in portable hi-fi, and the cheapest music player it sells is the P1, which costs $430.)

The FiiO JM21 was released in January 2025 and is available now. It comes in one sky blue and silver finish.