MP3 Players

[fergo]

Hi guys,

Seems like ages since I last posted here :smallbiggrin:.

Anyways, I've been thinking about getting a new MP3 player. I had one of those tiny square iPod nanos, which worked well enough once I got used to them.

Thing is, though, I'm not in a hurry to run out and buy another Apple product when I'm sure there are lots of equally good alternatives out there for much cheaper. I've got a smart phone (well, a moderately intelligent phone) so I really just need something to play my music. I also don't mind buying something second hand or a model that's out of date, as long as it still works fine. I'm looking for something around 12 or 16 GB.

The only advantage an apple product would have, I think, is that it would charge when plugged into my speakers, provided that the apple product was a few years old. So, not really worth spending much more money just for that.

Now, I had a look in a random shop on the way back and saw something called the Sandisk Sansa View--for a fraction, of course, of the alternative apple products. I did a quick search and the reviews look pretty good. I also found someone selling one on eBay for £1. Yeah... not sure if that's a good thing or not...

Anyways, basically, what I'm asking is: Does anyone have any advice they can give me on finding a good-quality and relatively cheap MP3 player? Any particular brands I should look out for? Any I should avoid?

Thanks :smallsmile:.

[Cristo Meyers]

Sansa's are pretty good all-round. The one's I had were a little prone to freaking out if they get a static shock, though.

My current one is a Sony Walkman. Good sound, battery life, stores and plays movies even.

[Don Julio Anejo]

I currently use a Sony Walkman, and after an iPod, the interface is complete annoying bovine pile of excrement. Up/down arrows always change albums which you can't avoid or disable, there's no auto shut off/auto resume when you insert/remove headphones, it takes much longer to navigate because no scroll wheel thingie... The only good thing is battery life.

Honestly, just go buy an older model iPod Nano (i.e. 4th gen). I've seen them on CL for 50-70 bucks (that was almost a year ago) and they're worth the money.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Um.... maybe this is a silly question, but...... can't your "moderately intelligent" phone play MP3's?

In any case, my old-lady has a Zen Media Player manufactured by Creative Labs. It's got a decently sized screen, good sound quality, an SD card slot to expand on the built in 2 gigs of memory, and actual physical buttons for the interface (she hates touch-screens). It only cost about $60 almost 4 years ago.

It's even got a built in FM tuner, if radio isn't dead to you.

[fergo]

Cristo Meyers: What's the interface on Sansa devices like? And do you need a special program to import music (like iTunes)?

Don Julio Anejo: Yeah, I guess that's one of the benefits of iPods that I haven't taken into account. On the other hand, if it all possible I'd like to avoid iTunes like the plague, and (at least in the shops I looked in), iPods tend to be two or three times the price of rival products :smallannoyed:.

Kelb_Panthera: Yep. Thing is, though, that I listen to music quite a lot, and it would drain the battery of my phone really quickly.

Thanks for all the thoughts so far :smallbiggrin:.

[Imperial Psycho]

I use a Sansa 4GB clip player, and it's served me pretty well. No, they don't require any kind of specialised program to put mp3s on, at least with mine. You just plug in via USB, then copy files across.

[tyckspoon]

I have a refurb Sansa Fuse. Not the Fuse+, just the old model Fuse.. which you can only acquire as refurbs now, and that if you're lucky. It uses a clickwheel, or as close as makes no difference, and I assume you can't get them anymore because Apple probably sued them to make them stop using the clickwheel-like interface.

My best understanding of the MP3 market right now is that you can get either good (basically a used iPod) or cheap (dang near everything else), but you'll have a really hard time finding both.. any cheap player is going to be missing something pretty significant, likely because Apple figured out how solve that problem, implemented it on the iPods, and won't let anybody else use their solution.

(That said, Creative and Sansa/Sandisk are your best bets for quality non-Apple players, but the currently available models from both aren't as good as they used to be, IMO.)

[Cristo Meyers]

Cristo Meyers: What's the interface on Sansa devices like? And do you need a special program to import music (like iTunes)?



Imperial Psycho covered the file transfer part. No special program: plug and play. I got by fine with Windows Media Player.

My Sansa were always Clips, so I can't speak for the interface on the other, larger players. The interface with the player was nothing special. It's pretty basic. It can take a little while navigating the menus since the screen on the clip is so small (though screen size, surprisingly, isn't an issue.)

[Nai_Calus]

I've got a Sansa Clip+ I use.

Pros:
Decent battery life.
Tiny.
No iTunes or any other loading software annoyance. Plug in, copy files using Explorer, boom.
Has a screen, so you can actually see what you're listening to.
MicroSD card slot, so you can expand the storage and if you want have multiple cards for different kinds of music.
As far as I know, the only brand that will natively support .ogg files, should you have any. I have quite a few, so this was brilliant for me.

Cons:
Decent battery life, but you'll need to recharge it eventually during the day. Will usually last most of the way through it, though.
The clip is poorly designed and tends to break off eventually. It wasn't vital to me, so it didn't bother me much.
Connects via Mini USB, so you're not as likely to find a charger for it lying around as you are if you've got a device that charges via micro USB or Apple 30pin.

[Groundhog]

Sansas are very reliable--my brother has owned one for around six years and it hasn't broken yet. There is one issue with them though, if you add an extra memory card, it takes an age to "refresh the media" every time you sync something to the device.