What type of portable music player should I get?

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I'd like to second everything Kitrax has said, and add that i love my little MuVo, although there is no search function, which is a tad annoying.

 

Humm, I'm veering towards this Zen Micro...it is a tad pricey for me but would probably pay itself off by being extremely useful.

I just remembered that I can tape directly from the PA system to an mp3 player.

iPod doesn't seem that versatile for some reason...especially if it won't do my laundry.

 

Yes, it does Kitrax. I do agree that the whole non-replaceable battery concept is pretty stupid. Also, my fiancee's iPod has had terrible battery life. The battery life on mine has been quite good but then mine's newer. I also can understand why you wouldn't like their proprietary file format, especially if you are using multiple players and working with the music. If you don't care about such things (like me) then it doesn't really cause a problem. Also, the quality seems to be fine, at least on my model. Maybe they've improved the quality lately.

 

Oh hell yes I can. My bro's old iTrash sometimes wouldn't even charge, even though connected and detected by Winblows... tried swapping USB cables more times than I can count, and it just didn't worked. Worst ever, it took a drop from roughly 15 feet and it just exploded in tiny pieces while my MuVo just had a couple more scratches and dents.

Build quality is shoddy, battery life sucks, you're stuck with iTunes trash, never mind the conversion of MP3 files into Apple's crappy audio format, downloads via iTrash are unreliable. Can't think of anything else at the moment.

Archos, Creative and iRiver and underrated. My MuVo is rock-solid and I definitively WILL buy another Creative somewhere in the future.

/me cranks shotgun, shoots Phoney Ericsson

Argh! There are OTHER manufacturers than PHONEY ERICSSON which make freaking MP3 phones, FFS! LG, Moto, Nokia, you name it, they make it! What's with you people and the obsession with Phoney Ericsson?

LG Fusic, Nokia 6235, Moto SLVR L7, Nokia 5300, LG Chocolate, LG Shine, LG VX8100 & VX-8300, Nokia 3300 (though a little older), Nokia N91, RAZR, KRZR, RIZR, Moto V710... had enough?

[ February 21, 2007, 18:26: Message edited by: Disciple of The Watch ]

 

Tisk, Tisk, Tisk, DotW, not a single Samsung listed, while listing 4 crummy Motos...
What about the Samsung T629, the Sync, the Trace, and all the numerous others?

 

iPod does indeed suck - my sister's died pretty damn quick. Plus it doesn't have all the funky extras that other brands have.

 

The "4 crummy Motos" suck, I concur, but are better than the f****** iTrash. I'm just maddened that when someone mentions "music player phone", that _!@#*($) Phoney Ericsson automatically gets mentioned. Phoney Ericsson SUCKS. Get the point. I only like Phoney Ericsson phones when they're getting caressed by a sledgehammer.

BTW, that was a quick list over my head - and as for Samsung... my T809 died after barely more than a year of service. Okay, it's a *prototype*... but it's not the first prototype I get my hands on, and NO OTHER such phone EVER died on me like the f****** Samsung did. My 6340i has some firmware bugs, but RF-wise, it PWNS ALL my other Noks. My first 3595 is also a prototype, never faced the shadow of a problem with it. I"ve also got my hands on other prototypes, and apart from some firmware bugs, they worked just fine, like the final production model.

Sorry, Samsung, but you've fallen into disfavor... I'm not getting another of your phones anytime soon. You're the Samsung lover, Kit, not me.

Anyway, back to music player... err, on second thought there's nothing I wanted to say I didn't already, so I'll leave it at that - Creative pwns.

 

Thread revival!

I used to be on the iPod side but as of 2 days ago, my frickin iPod Photo turned into a giant iPod shuffle, I sh*t you not. I didn't drop, wet or do anything stupid with my iPod (unlike my cellphone which has fallen in a pool with me at least twice, had beer spilled on it, etc. and still works) but suddenly the click wheel stopped working. wtf? the buttons still work but the wheel will now move at all. luckily the thing crapped out at a decent volume, so now I have an iPod photo whose volume I can't adjust and whose songs I can't choose except by moving forward or backward. Nice. It isn't even that old, just over a year and a half.

So. Now I'm open to other options. Creative supporters (Kitrax and DotW mainly), what do you guys recommend? I'll need something not quite so bulky or heavy and has no problem with being bounced around a lot as I will be using it to jog and workout as well. Memory is not a big issue for me, 20GB will be sufficient for me. Advise away please!

If anyone has any other alternatives also, please put your 2 cents in.

 

Anything from Creative. Right now, their most popular is the Zen Vision: M. The Zen Sleek Photo looks good too, but IIRC, they stopped selling it...but you can still find them new online.

Besides Creative, Archos and iRiver make excellent players from what I've heard. Stay away from the M$ Zune...there are *way* better WiFi players coming out this summer/fall that will beat the Zune at everything.

 

I was actually looking at that on the net but it's a bit pricey.. 400$-500$.

Question Kit, what "flash" mp3 players do you know of? When I say flash, I mean like the technology used in the iPod nano. There are supposedly less issues because this technology no longer uses a hard drive and reduces/eliminates the tendency of the unit to mess up because it is being bounced around all the time with a hard drive's internal parts being jolted around and eventually malfunctioning.

 

Well...I know of a few. The froblem is, they're really small...memory wise that is. They are usually under 4GB.

Creative just came out with the 'Stone'. It's only 1GB, but with claims of up to 10hour of continuous playback, and the fact that's it only about $40...you can't get find a better deal than that! It doesn’t have a screen, and is meant to compete directly with the new iTrash Shuffle…but does so without being locked into iTunes, and is $40 cheaper.
If you need/want a screen, the Creative Zen Nano Plus offers capacities of 512MB and 1GB.

I don't really follow the flash players due to their limited storage capacities.

 

oh, crud :/

I guess I'll take a while in deciding yet. In the meantime I'll have to stick to my crap giant iPod shuffle.

 

My friends iPod NANO was ran over by his truck... twice and was still in one solid piece. It even still could turn on, though much beyond that did not happen.

As for me, I like iPods, they are inexpensive (see not cheap ), and I just bought one (fourth gen 20gb) with a two year warrantee for $90.

 

There are plenty of stories of players of every brand breaking down for no reason. I don't think you can single out any particular brand as being worse for crapping out than any other.

My recommendation: don't spend too much - just get anything reasonably priced that will do the job, because you'll probably be getting a better one in a year or so anyway (because the technology will advance, even if the thing survives that long). It's a terrible throwaway attitude to have, but that's the way things are with consumer electronics these days.