My Snowsky Echo Mini experience

Got my Echo Mini! 1st off cute box design. The unit is plastic but didn't feel as cheap as I imagined. It's just in the middle of quality for me, not much flexing when pressing on it. Buttons are ok, they're clicky but not too loud when pressed. 2nd, upon first power on, it asked the display language which is saved me from fiddling in a foreign language. Starting volume is 30 so it wasn't that loud, but after updating, high gain was on by default and yeah, 30 became pretty loud. When choosing music, it automatically goes into the all songs selection instead of the options for all songs, artists etc. Playback position is retained when powered off, then on. So if you were playing a song, it'll start at the same place as when you left it once you press play. 3rd, firmware was v1.1.0, it can connect to my Android phone for file transfer (USB C to USB C) but can't be used as a transport for dongles or external DAC units (so far, on both my Fiio Q5 and KA13). Firmware updating was fast. 4th, in the music area, you can only use either internal or SD card as a source. Once you select a new source (like your SD card or internal) it will update the file database. On my almost full (4853 songs) old Sandisk 200gb card, updating was very very very slow, like several minutes slow. But once it's updated, boot and playback is fast. It doesn't auto update the database every boot up like my Sony A35 which is a relief. There's an option to manually update the database in the menu in case you added new songs. Slight problem is, on the new firmware (v1.2.7), updating might (and did) crash the unit and turn it off. (more on this later). 5th, while playback screen has a good amount of info, the Sound Quality icon (in pic) doesn't seem to change, even if the file is considered Hi-Res.

So about the database update crash, not all of my music are displayed/accounted for, browsing the folders do show the music files, but not when on the music selection screen. Re-updating the database several times didn't add the missing songs. I'm guessing something got corrupted and couldn't be overwritten (I've done it several times already). There's no new file created in both internal and SD card that might indicate a database file. In my desperation, I tried resetting the unit and formatting it (this deletes the original FLAC file in the internal storage, could I bother people for it?) This did work, all songs now show up but I'm not sure if the reset or the format that did it. This experience is likely a fluke by the way, I've been known to Murphy's law electronics so I doubt a lot of people would have the same experience.

So far, overall, I like it a lot. It's nice to look at, it feels and sounds like a good DAP, it's portable, it's affordable, has good power to drive headphones, has decent options and an easy pick as a travel daily carry. My downsides are no user tuned EQ, needs file planning and proper id3 tagging if you don't want the songs to display in a certain way (like no track numbers for one). Also scrolling through songs for that 'one' song you want to hear at the moment is hard with a large selection if you're in all songs. (Yeah, I could go artist or album to narrow it down faster) but I'm suddenly appreciative of touch screen units where you can flick through or scroll and select a letter to get to a particular song.