Good mp3 player?

Yeah, I know, we all hate the frequent "Recommend me (x)" threads, but I've been really eye-balling some of these players ever since a guy at work let me borrow his. His only had 256mb storage, and I'm really wanting something a bit bigger. I want something that's really reliable, won't break down, and can take somewhat of a beating. I'll mainly be using it to jog/run, workout, mow the lawn, around the house - basically doing just about anything.

So my question to you.. what have you tried? What do you own? What do you recommend? What do you recommend staying away from? Prices to look out for? Yeah, I hate making noobish posts, but I really want some insight before I take the plunge and buy one. Thanks to any who respond.

i doubt this will help much, but, why not:

i have a nokia3300 its a cellphone mp3 player. reccomending it probably wont do much good (considering you arent looking for a phone) but i can give you some things ive learned from experience.

1. the size is great. the cheapest way to go is to just get an mp3cd player, but theyre so fucking big in comparison to any mp3 player. my phone is on the bigger side, but its still smaller than a cd player, so i can carry it with me all the time.

2. i have 64mb and its definately not enough, but you allready knew that, so get the biggest you can, within reason, and if it uses flash mem, make sure it has an expansion slot (mmc, sd, compact flash, mem stick) theres really no difference in the mediums in terms of quality, just slight price variations.

one thing i hate about my phone is it uses proprietary headphones, theyre not bad, but its an inconvenience. i HIGHLY doubt you would find something like that on a stand alone unit, but you never know.

get something with usb2, it can be lengthly filling up a gig or so

and a gig mmc is about $80 on ebay, so keep the price in mind when looking at stuff with expansion slots.

edit: the phone also records. it can use the phone mic, or you can plug in a mic (it has a mini jack, but comes with an adaptor cable for a normal sized one) it can be handy at times. its also a radio, plays aacs and midis as well, and has a full keypad for texting (no camera however :o) so i guess try to keep these kinds of features in mind, especially the radio (which is showing up more and more) since you never know when you just wont feel like your mp3s, or need the news or something

although it has become very mainstream, I recommend the iPod, worth every penny.

I have a Creative Zen Touch 20gb player. I haven't had it very long, but so far I really like it. The software that comes with it is really easy to use, and it comes with a CD ripper. It advertises a 24 hour battery life, and I must say, it comes damn close to that. It's about $270, which makes it a lil cheaper than an ipod.

Every ipod I've come across is ridiculously high. I really don't want to spend more than $100 - $150.

I've already had bad experiences with mp3cd players and won't go back to them. Ever.

I don't need a huge disk. Something around 2gb would be fine. Right now I'm surfing ebay, and the only one that really caught my eye is this so far - http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=73839&item=5723181334&rd=1

I don't need the radio or anything, or any voice recorder, but it seems that's what most of these come with anyway. All I care about is storage size, a good menu to navigate through, and it being able to take a beating.

Is anyone wanting my Rio 500? A whopping 64MB built in + expansion slot, only takes 1 AA battery and fits in the palm of your hand

Get an iPod.

It's the MP3 you want,trust me. I got one not too long ago and I must say,it's totally worth the price just on looks alone.

BIG-

If you are going to use it on the move DO NOT BUY A HARD DRIVE BASED PLAYER. The iPod and any other HDD based player is mechanical in natures. It's got losts od moving parts in the hard drive and any shock can fuck it up. Anyone that recommends a hard drive based player to someone looking to exercise while using it (meaning strapped to their person) isn't making a good recommendation.

Everyone may love the iPod, but you don't want to use it for exercising.

I use a Creative Zen Xtra 30GB. It may not be 'chic' and it may not have the pretty body of the iPod, but it's also not limited to playing only MP3s and AC3s, plus it cost me $100+ less than a similarly equipped iPod. The battery time I get out of a single charge is that I can go a 9 hour work day without the battery dying, while playing 256Mbit MP3s (higher the bit rate the quicker the battery drains). I've gone at least 12 full playing hours on a single charge, though I think that was near the end of the charges life. The iPod claims are 8 hours on a full charge. Most people won't be listening to music non-stop for 8 or 12 hours a day, so it may be irelevant.

SonGohan said:

it being able to take a beating.

Click to expand...

Stay away from any HDD (iPod, Nomad Jukeboxes) based player. I may be beating a dead horse, but you will be extremely pissed when the head of the HDD hits a platter while running and crashes your hard drive.

So you'd recommend the Creative Xtra for this? I tried to stress the beating part, because I wasn't sure how hdd-based players stood up to it.

I bought a cheap RCA mp3 capable portable CD player. $30.00 at walmart a 750 MB CD holds about 120 mp3's and CDR's are cheap enough that you can burn a bunch and its still less than the ipod route. You can still burn folders and it will regognize everything just like anything fancy one.I would get a fancy mp3 player but at the gym it really takes a beating so I don't feel bad dropping it or bumping it around . Two AA batteries last about a month (4-5 times a week 40 minutes per session). Its less bling bling but funtions all the same .

From the looks of it, I'm probably going to have to buy one of those mp3 players that work off of memory sticks. I may have to settle for 256mb, but I guess that isn't too bad if I can constantly change out the tunes.

SonGohan said:

From the looks of it, I'm probably going to have to buy one of those mp3 players that work off of memory sticks. I may have to settle for 256mb, but I guess that isn't too bad if I can constantly change out the tunes.

Click to expand...

Man good luck with it, I personally would love one of these. I have gigs of mp3's. I wish my external hdd was pocket size..

BTW man, KEN avatar. Haha I know your like the godliest ground guile, but KEN is to pimp to not show.

I'm also in the market for one of these things. My wife and I are looking
to buy 2 of them, since we're going on a long ass trip soon..,

I wanted to ask, how's the new SONY mp3 I see on tv commercials?

Or should I just go for a pair of IPOD's?

Lord Wolfgang Krauser said:

Man good luck with it, I personally would love one of these. I have gigs of mp3's. I wish my external hdd was pocket size..

BTW man, KEN avatar. Haha I know your like the godliest ground guile, but KEN is to pimp to not show.

Click to expand...

I thought about it. Ken's crossup MK is a thing of legend. Sadly, somebody already has a Super Turbo avatar of Ken, so I decided against it. A sig screenshot of the crossup in action would be sweet, though. I fucking love that crossup.

SonGohan said:

So you'd recommend the Creative Xtra for this? I tried to stress the beating part, because I wasn't sure how hdd-based players stood up to it.

Click to expand...

No I wouldn't recommend the Xtra for what you're looking to do. I was only pointing out what I own personally.

Memory sticks, for what you want to do, while not optimal in terms of holding shit loads of music, are perfect. No moving parts to break, so no shock will damage a hard drive in that type of system.

xtoo_short20x said:

I'm also in the market for one of these things. My wife and I are looking
to buy 2 of them, since we're going on a long ass trip soon..,

I wanted to ask, how's the new SONY mp3 I see on tv commercials?

Or should I just go for a pair of IPOD's?

Click to expand...

Sonys' sucks...it doesnt play MP3s, instead they use their ATRAC3 shit. From what I read you have to convert your music to ATRAC3 at the lowest quality to get the reported 30 hours of battery life.

Get a new Ipod. I go 2 days between charges, and I use mine a lot.

lemonflav said:

Sonys' sucks...it doesnt play MP3s, instead they use their ATRAC3 shit. From what I read you have to convert your music to ATRAC3 at the lowest quality to get the reported 30 hours of battery life.

Get a new Ipod. I go 2 days between charges, and I use mine a lot.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice, some IPODs will have to do then.

So I'm the only cheap bastard that plays mp3's on a portable CD player .
me=gangsta thug hardcore

You may think iPod is a lot of money, but it is very much worth it. You know the old saying...you get what you pay for.

Lets Gekiga In said:

You may think iPod is a lot of money, but it is very much worth it. You know the old saying...you get what you pay for.

Click to expand...

That may be true, but it's not a good fit for SonGohan's original request. No one wants to crash the drive in the MP3 player while exercising.

slerch666 said:

That may be true, but it's not a good fit for SonGohan's original request. No one wants to crash the drive in the MP3 player while exercising.

Click to expand...

For running on a treadmill, it's perfect. I usually run 1.8 miles or so.

Lets Gekiga In said:

For running on a treadmill, it's perfect. I usually run 1.8 miles or so.

Click to expand...

I hope you don't have it strapped to your side when you do that. You are adding shock to the drive every time it moves with you, which can kill a hard drive, no matter how well manufactured. Laptop hard drives are built for a certain amount of beating, not repeated beating associated with leg movement and such.

If you strap it to a sationary bit of the tread mill when running, then yes, that would be perfect.

Hard drives are delecate and should be treated as such. Just a recommendation, as I'm sure people can get away with exercising with them and not have a hard drive crash, when you spend that much money on something I wouldn't want to have to rebuy if I didn't have to.

I know you said no to the CD player ones...

I have one of THESE and use it for working out all the time. I have a small case that holds about 5 CDs that goes in with the carry case I got with it and that = 4.5Gb storage (one in the player). It is not as convient as a HDD mp3 player, but I have never had it skip once, batteries last 55 - 95 hours (on 2 "AA"s), and you can replace the media easily. It also has a jog dial on it and will allow folders.

I can attest that these batteries last forever it seems. Also I got it for car trips (my new Element has a MP3 aux input ) and for working out, as stated: never skipped once. The sound is good on it, but it is mainly based on MP3 quality. When I bought it I could only spen about $100 on one and I wanted to get the most value out of it (storage, battery, durability) and after a bit of research I decided on a CD based MP3 player for my needs. When I got mine about a year ago I got it for $100 with the free carry case, I would easily recomend it for that price today as well. I will also bring it to work and plug the line out into my speakers to listen to it for 8 hours strait a day... I can easily go for more than a week before battery changes. I have more than gotten my money worth from it.

Anyways just my $0.02

I'd suggest the I-River H-120. You get 20 gigs, a built in FM radio, and a voice recorder. It's only a lil bit bigger than a 'pod. The only gripe I have with it is that its method of navigation is this lil stick similar to the NGPC's. Personally, i 'm not hot on it, but the player is good overall. Price is low 300s, IIRC - - bought it a while ago, so it may be cheaper now.