MP3 players

red assassin · Post by **red assassin** » Sun, 18. Dec 11, 19:59

This is partially a request for help, in case anybody knows something meeting my requirements that I haven't found, and partially a rant about the MP3 player market.

I'd like an MP3 player that is a) small and light, b) has plenty of storage space (more than 32GB, or expansion card support), and c) has a long battery life. Bonus points for support for free audio codecs (primarily .ogg). I'm not bothered about video playback, touchscreens, etc. As long as it plays music and has a reasonable interface for selecting/queueing music, I'm happy.

And I swear, it doesn't exist. Two of the three points above at once. All the modern high-end players have big touchscreens and video support and bells and whistles. Here are some examples I've found that come close, but I'm not totally happy with any of them.

In expensive options (£200 upwards), we have:

The Samsung Galaxy S Wifi has microSD card support, 16GB of internal storage, and a battery life of >100 hours of music... but it's a brick with a 5" touchscreen, 1GHz processor, etc.

The snappily named Sony NWZ-A867 has 64GB of internal memory and is pretty light, but it only manages 26 hours of playback. (I'm facing long international flights, so an mp3 player that can cope with that is a must.)

The Apple iPod Classic has a pretty good battery life and plenty of storage space, but it's still fairly heavy from the hard drive, and as a Linux user it's a pest to use them.

In cheaper options, there are:

Older hard drive players that could be sourced from eBay (and possibly have RockBox installed), but they're generally going to be heavier and with worse battery lives.

The SanDisk Sansa Fuze+, which has 16GB of internal storage, an SD card slot, and pretty good battery life, but I'm seeing a lot of criticism of the stability and user interface in reviews.

The Philips GoGear Muse, which likewise has 16GB of storage and and SD card slot, but the battery life isn't as good and it's criticised for being too fragile.

I cannot believe that in this day and age of cheap flash memory there's so little choice for devices with lots of it... Am I missing something?

Samuel Creshal · Post by **Samuel Creshal** » Sun, 18. Dec 11, 20:34

I cannot believe that in this day and age of cheap flash memory there's so little choice for devices with lots of it... Am I missing something?

MP3 players aren's a status symbol anymore, so companies don't bother.

Cowon used to make decent players (incl. OGG/FLAC support), what happened to them?

Diamonddragon · Post by **Diamonddragon** » Sun, 18. Dec 11, 20:37

I have the Sanza Fuze, while I used it it was great, had no problem with the UI and it was rockstable (it got lots of updates, so maybe it was instable at the beginning).

mrbadger · Post by **mrbadger** » Sun, 18. Dec 11, 20:39

I got myself an 8Gb Sony Walkman mp3 player for £80 (basically an old style iPod Nano clone). It was purchased as a replacement for my old iPod Nano that recently got crushed, and it's perfectly fine.

I stopped being interested in larger memory for an mp3 player a long time back. Have you ever known anyone listen to every single thin on their player before re-syncing and changing it? Seems to me that 8Gb is just about perfect.

Samuel Creshal · Post by **Samuel Creshal** » Sun, 18. Dec 11, 20:43

Diamonddragon wrote:I have the Sanza Fuze, while I used it it was great, had no problem with the UI and it was rockstable (it got lots of updates, so maybe it was instable at the beginning).

Fuze or Fuze+? They have completely different hardware (and firmware, presumably).

shifty_powers · Post by **shifty_powers** » Sun, 18. Dec 11, 20:54

how about:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Apple-iPod-Vide ... _lmf_tit_1

and:

http://www.rockbox.org/

It would still maybe be a little heavier than you were looking at, but it would have enough capacity, decent battery life and with rockbox support for stuff like ogg files...

Diamonddragon · Post by **Diamonddragon** » Sun, 18. Dec 11, 20:54

Samuel Creshal wrote:Fuze or Fuze+? They have completely different hardware (and firmware, presumably).

Fuze, though I hoped that the successor wouldn't be inferior

Samuel Creshal · Post by **Samuel Creshal** » Sun, 18. Dec 11, 20:56

Diamonddragon wrote:
Samuel Creshal wrote:Fuze or Fuze+? They have completely different hardware (and firmware, presumably).
Fuze, though I hoped that the successor wouldn't be inferior

This is Sandisk we're talking about.

@red assassin: What about a Raspberry Pi with 4x AA batteries?

red assassin · Post by **red assassin** » Sun, 18. Dec 11, 21:05

The Fuze battery life doesn't appear to be as good as the Fuze+, and I can't find the 16GB variant for sale.

I actually bought a Cowon S9 a year or so ago. Decent player, but the .ogg tag support had been broken by an update. I rolled it back to an older version, but other stuff was broken (don't recall what), so I sent it back. With this said, the J3 does look pretty nice, and though it's not much cheaper than the Galaxy S, it is a lot lighter, with good battery life, a microSD card slot, and .ogg support. I shall Google around for any similar issues affecting that one, but that could well be a solution.

On smaller storage - I find if I haven't got my whole collection handy, there's inevitably something I'm in the mood for that's not available, especially on long journeys. I've been getting by with a 16GB player for a while now, but that keeps happening (and the UI is a bit crap and is getting wearing).

xeon_1 · Post by **xeon_1** » Sun, 18. Dec 11, 21:16

When i was choosing an mp3 player back in the day is basicly was a tie between an ipod and an archos model
Have you looked at them
some of them have a pretty good battery life
http://www.archos.com/products/mp3_play ... nl&lang=en.
I choose an ipod because it was a bit lighter/smaller/better battery life but in the current range something may suite you.

Maximum476 · Post by **Maximum476** » Mon, 19. Dec 11, 17:56

Sansa Clip +

Maybe doesn't reach you requirement for battery life but they are cheap enough you could just buy two lol. The sd card slot makes it easy to get loads of extra storage. These things are also renowned for their great sound.

Stars_InTheirEyes · Post by **Stars_InTheirEyes** » Mon, 19. Dec 11, 19:02

Whats wrong with the iPods?
The touch is more fancy but the classic has storage of up to 120gb, iirc.

Samuel Creshal · Post by **Samuel Creshal** » Mon, 19. Dec 11, 19:13

Stars_InTheirEyes wrote:Whats wrong with the iPods?

Ever tried using it with something not called iTunes?

red assassin · Post by **red assassin** » Tue, 20. Dec 11, 01:17

Maximum476 wrote:Sansa Clip +

Maybe doesn't reach you requirement for battery life but they are cheap enough you could just buy two lol. The sd card slot makes it easy to get loads of extra storage. These things are also renowned for their great sound.

With an 11 hour battery life, I'd need about six to match the 63 hour life of a Cowon J3, at which point the cost starts to stack up rather...

Stars_InTheirEyes wrote:Whats wrong with the iPods?
The touch is more fancy but the classic has storage of up to 120gb, iirc.

As I said in my first post and Samuel points out, they're (while not impossible) a large pain to use without invoking iTunes.

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MP3 players

MP3 players