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Cheap Streaming - Tibo Bond Mini

A truly low cost WiFi streamer is quite hard to come by it seems. The best option used to be the Chromecast Audio, which cost around the £30 mark when it was available. It had good reviews and now fetches £50-£60 on ebay! A popular alternative is the Yamaha WXAD-10, but at £135, it doesn't really meet my definition of low-cost.


The Tibo Bond Mini represents what you can still get your hands on for a similar outlay to what the Chromecast used to be, although these are now discontinued too, so its down to the dregs of the new stock remaining on ebay.


It doesn't have the digital optical output the Chromecast had, so sound quality is going to be dependent on the on board D/A converter, but it seems to have a number of favorable reviews.



Connections are simple - 5v micro usb power, a 3.5mm audio out jack and a WiFi pairing button. Setup was relatively painless too.


The Tibo app allows you to control multiple Tibo devices, access internet radio stations and the streaming services it supports: basically Tidal, Spotify and Napster. I only want to use it with Spotify, and you can select the device and operate it from within Spotify itself without going into the Tibo app.


It sounds perfectly good to me, and it's what I do most of my music listening on. Perhaps a better streamer with a digital output and separate DAC would have some benefit but I doubt that, if there is any difference at all, it's worth shelling out the extra money.



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