I'm thinking of picking one up sooner or later. I figure there should be some Christmas sales coming up in a month or so.

Anyone have any opinions on any mp3 players? I have no clue as to which one to get. I've been looking on epinions.com, but there's so many to choose from. Any info is appreciated.

-------------------------
Justin

 

Just make sure if the latest generation of Ipod have replacable batteries. Or ANY Mp3 player, for that matter.

http://www.ipodsdirtysecret.com/

Watch that video.

 

i got an iriver 256mb couldnt ask for a better mp3. 150 songs and very easy to operate and download songs paid about 175.00.

 

Just like the song says, you're brain damaged if you own an Apple.

 

I own an Apple iPOD 40g third gen, and fortunately have never had a problem with the battery or any thing else. My friend had the 20gig and the battery life started getting bad after about 4 months. The new fourth gen iPOD's have much better battery life, but are still over priced and some units have a problem with the headphone jack. I bought mine last year and I know two other people with the third gens who've not had any problems with the battery. Unfortunately the ipod warranty isn't the greatest and to have the battery replaced can be pricey. I love my ipod for the amount of storage it has, it doubles as a hard drive and music player. I have about 3900 songs that I ripped mainly from cd, and some very old napster stuff, probably less than 5 percent. I can honestly say that if you manage the music yourself you won't need to carry a 40 gig unit.

For an MP3 player there are tons of options, mainly flash memory units vs. hard drive units. The flash memory units have no moving parts, longer battery life and better suited to an active lifestyle, the drawback is limited storage capacity. The hard drive based units will hold more for the money but can be very fragile, especially if the hard drive is active at any time of impact. Fortunately most Hard Drive based MP3 players only use the hard drive to load about 30mins of music into memory.

If you are making the mp3's from cds that you already own, any mp3 device will do. If you plan on purchasing or downloading music, look at what kind of files the MP3 player can play, for example an IPOD will not play a WMA file purchased from the MSN music store.

Sorry for the long post,

Mike

 

"Better battery life" and "have the battery replaced can be pricey" is not good enough for a 21st Century product that costs $400. Even the $10 dollar 80s walkman can do way better than THAT.

 

I would love to buy an MP3 player, but unless anyone knows of a waterproof player, it would be silly for me to buy one. I'd use it only when I'm cleaning pools, and $120 for a decent player is a bad investment on something that will be ruined if I fall into a pool.

 

I've been using portable MP3 players since they came out, I've been through a few. The original RIO player was good, lasted for years, but sometime recently they switched interface software to Real software which I hate, so I won't buy another RIO.

For non-hard drive players I like the Creative Nomad IIC. It's about the size and weight of a deck of cards, fits in a shirt pocket or belt clip, and downloading new song to it takes a few minutes. I use it while working out, bike riding and rollerblading and it has taken alot of abuse, been dropped many times and still works just fine. it uses a AA battery instead of AAA, so it has a little more play time.

I have one of the hard drive players from creative, but I hardly use it. It's heavier and since I have a habit of dropping things it would be trash pretty quick. I do like the interface and setup features over the IIC. I had an RCA player before that, it was junk.


Brian

 

Yes I agree, when I bought my IPOD the real contenders were just starting to come out, and the IPOD was the way to go. There are much more versatile and economical mp3 players now.

 

The other thing you have to consider when looking at an mp3 player is the software. Some of the players come with horrible software.

I bought my ipod over two years ago, and the software it came with (musicmatch) is really easy to use and handles my *entire* mp3 collection.

FWIW, the battery life is about 6 hours now, as opposed to 10 when I first got it. I use it all day every day, it rides around in my truck, it sat out in the sun in Vegas every day for three months while charging. It got so hot I couldn't touch it most days.Still going strong. It's a first gen with a 10 GB hard drive.

 

I bought my ten year old a Samsung YP-T5H also known as a YEPP, back in May. The one I got holds only 4 hrs of music because of the 128MB capacity. But there is a 256MB version for a bit more. It runs for around 12 hours with replaceable AAA batteries.
In any case. I recommend this model. It's very tough, compact, and the unit is still going strong after alot of abuse from my daughter. Also, you can record right from the radio (has a FMtuner), or a cd player without hooking it up to the pc to download misuc. Seems to be very user friendly.
Paid about $120.00 from Crutchfield.

 

I picked up an IRIVER H120 for about 250 bucks on sale. I put an input in the back of the wife's headunit, now she doesn't carry cd's. She just plugs into the jack and goes. The unit is now up to something like 40+ albums and around 5K of single Mp3's (only using about half of it's capacity). She loves it, she won't give it back either

 

I love my Creative Zen Xtra 40 gig. Replaceable battery, works like a charm and lots of room.

 

I bought the 30gb Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox Zen for about $200. It's perfect and does exactly what I want it to do. I wouldn't waste the money on an iPod unless you love paying extra for the "popular" brand names. The 30gb holds approx 533 cd's (which I'll never be able to fill) and it even holds regular files as well. I burn alot of dvd's so I just rip them onto the mp3 player and when I'm ready to watch them on my notebook (on a plane or whatever), I just transfer the movie temporarily onto my notebook and watch it (instead of spinning the dvd drive running the battery dead after 2-3 hours). Anyways, just my .02. Good luck!

Oh yeah, I have it hooked up to the dvd player (avic-n1) in my truck too. I have more music then I even know what to do with between the mp3 player and xm radio.

 

Best bang for the buck is a Discman that plays MP3's off a CDR. 700 megs of MP3 on a disk that costs less than a buck - no special software, all I do is save a bunch of MP3s on a data CDR. Battery life is good, like 20 hours on a pair of AA cells, and you can change batteries or disks in seconds; you don't have to plug it in to the wall or a computer to refill it with music or power. There's a bunch to choose from at Walmart for under $100. I got a Panasonic player that displays the song title and has good antiskip; I can take it mountain biking and ride singletrack without it skipping.
If memory players get big and cheap enough, I'll bite: 512M for $100 will get my attention. 256M is almost useful; smaller capacities don't seem worthwhile.

To create MP3s from my CDs, I use Exact Audio Copy to rip them, and LAME to encode them to MP3.