Topic: Looking for a new MP3 player. Any ideas?

[Quemaqua]

Was in Best Buy the other day and just saw all kinds of nice ones... and my old iHP100 was starting to look really old.  And sad.  And the hdd on the thing has been slowly giving out for years now, so I figure now's a good time to try and upgrade.

The Zune looked really nice, despite being from Microsoft, but I realized that beyond the general look of the thing and the general interface (I hate anything with an ipod-style ring selector), I wouldn't know anything about other support.  I definitely want something with good battery life if I can help it, and something that supports drag-and-drop functionality would be another must.  Is that pretty standard for these newer MP3 players, or not so much?

[gpw11]

I'm a pretty big Creative fan, although I have no idea what they've been putting out lately.

[sirean_syan]

I really like the iAudio X5 series, but I think they're being phased out for shinier, less open ended models. They use a lot of the same setup as the old iRivers in terms of acting like an external hard drive and not requiring you to use some uploading program, which is actually becoming more and more of a rarity these days. Some models also have a battery life of nearly 20 hours if you're willing to have a slightly bigger player. It's worth a look because if you liked a lot of what the older iRiver models offered, iAudio is doing a lot of the same things.

[idolminds]

I've heard a lot of good about the iAudio and the Sandisk Sansa lines.

[scottws]

They use a lot of the same setup as the old iRivers in terms of acting like an external hard drive and not requiring you to use some uploading program, which is actually becoming more and more of a rarity these days.

Are you saying here that proprietary programs are becoming a rarity, or allowing Windows Explorer drag-and-drop is becoming a rarity?  I couldn't tell here.

[sirean_syan]

Sorry about that. I mean drag and drop seems to be less common these days, which is a shame. I'd assume it's because a lot more people are trying to appear more iPodish and put you through a program that tries to do all the organizing for you.

[scottws]

Ok.  Yeah, that's what I thought.  Initially I thought you were saying the opposite and was surprised that was the case.

[ren]

How much music do you need it to hold?

[Quemaqua]

Well, storage is good.  I don't really know how much I'd need exactly.  I guess 10 gigs is probably the standard on the upper size limits?  I don't put all my music on it, but I do have a fairly substantial jazz collection which I keep on there (about 2 gigs), and the rest is mostly assorted game music (probably another 2 gigs) and podcasts, along with an assload of Dragnet old-time radio shows.

[gpw11]

I guess the real question here is how much are you willing to spend?

[Quemaqua]

Money isn't really an object.  I mean, I just want to know what my options are.  I don't need the most expensive thing, but if there's something that meets my other requirements that happens to be pricey, I still want to know what it is, you know?

[JacksRag(e)]

If you're interested, I'm looking to actually sell my Toshiba Gigabeat.  It's drag and drop, plays music and videos and has good battery life.  And it's a 30 gig player, too, so plenty of room for you.  I'm actually looking to upgrade to a Kenwood player, so I'd rather someone get some good use out of it.  If you want, I could just ship it to you so you can test it out and see if you like it.  It's solidly built, has great sound quality and good battery life.  Rated at 30 hours, but I've had it go up to 26 or so.

Gigabeat V30

[gpw11]

DON'T TRUST HIM!  HE KILLED KEEBS.

[JacksRag(e)]

You shut up or you're next.

[gpw11]

I'm sorry.

[ren]

well if you go for a hard drive player you can get 80gigs for $250 which is a pretty good deal and probably big enough for most, if not all of your music. That's ipod which you hate but I'm assuming that the competitors are priced in the same ballpark.

but if you go flash, it sounds like 4gigs isn't enough for you and the next step up is 8gigs. 8gig mp3 players will probably be around $200.

I'm totally out of the loop since I got mine a few years ago so I can't recommend anything but those are the kind of prices you'd be looking at.

[Quemaqua]

Yours doesn't sound too bad hoob, but it's kind of massive.  Is that strictly because it's also a video player?  It's even bigger than my current one, and I was sort of hoping to go a little smaller if I could help it.

I'm wondering if I should go for a hard drive player again, too.  I didn't have good luck with this one... it required a number of reformats in its lifetime just to stay running smoothly, and I still occasionally get weird hitches when it doesn't read quite right.

[WindAndConfusion]

but if you go flash, it sounds like 4gigs isn't enough for you and the next step up is 8gigs. 8gig mp3 players will probably be around $200.

Amazon disagrees. An 8GB iPod Nano is $180, other brands are $80-100. Most cheap (<$50) MP3 players have card slots, so you can buy more memory if you need it anyway. 8GB flash cards are only about $30, 16GB cards $60.

[ren]

shows what I know

[Quemaqua]

Does anybody know anything about Creative's ZEN players?  Thanks to the handy site that Hoob linked to, I was reading some reviews and stuff, and that one sounds pretty much like a perfect fit, but I'm concerned with the white screens of death that have been reported, mostly because people have said that once they get them, there's no fixing them.  And Creative has pissed me off many times lately with the way they've gone on with their PC sound cards and driver updates, so I don't know if I'm willing to place my trust in this area.  The iRiver clix2 looked awesome as well, though I'd have to settle for 8 gigs with that one, and it only half-supports drag-and-drop functionality.  But it looks really, really nifty...

[JacksRag(e)]

The Clix is really nifty.  I've been looking at it for a while, too.  I've heard almost nothing but good about the player and it's been getting a lot of rave reviews especially after the second revision with a better screen and whatnot. 
I'm not so sure about the Creatives.  The few people I know that had Zens had them crap out after less than a year, so I don't know about it.  I bought a Zen Stone for my brother, though and that's still working fine.  So, maybe it was a few bad units.
But I'd highly recommend the Clix, it's a pretty cool player.

[Quemaqua]

Too bad I can't pick it up retail anywhere, and they seem to be sold out at a lot of places.  I think ultimately that player seems better than any other I've looked at... just wish I could find a place that actually sold it so I could try it out.  I always hate buying stuff without getting to try it.  Plus ordering one of these looks to be more of a chore than should really be necessary...

[scottws]

I just looked at the iRiver page for the Clix, and holy crap what a useless piece of junk.  It doesn't specify the formats that it plays and there doesn't seem to be a specifications section you can go to.  That stuff is generally fairly important when deciding on a player.  Amazing.

[ScaryTooth]

I've heard nothing but good things about the Sansa.

Friend of mine has one and he loves his.

[Quemaqua]

I really hadn't imagined this could be so frustrating.  Ultimately the ZEN seems like the thing that would fit me best and do everything I want, but the reliability just isn't there.  Tons of people say theirs have died, and there aren't any fixes... and most positive reviews are from people who've only had the thing a month, when in as little as 3 or 4 months the things seem to have a high mortality rate.  UGH.  Everything else out there just isn't what I want, with possible exception of the Clix 2, which I can't try before I purchase one.

What the fuck is with retail?  Most places carry like 8 billion iPods and a few other models from other brands, but nothing with consistency.  I tried a Zune in a store and liked it pretty well, but I have to use some proprietary Microsoft program bullshit for it, which I refuse to do, sooo.... unless you're willing to settle for something as (in my opinion) sub-par as an iPod, you're SOL.

EDIT - The Sandisk players are looking pretty nice about now just because they're so cut-and-dried.  I have to look into that a bit further, but at least there's the possibility of light at the end of the tunnel with the Samsa View.  Also, found a very helpful site at http://www.anythingbutipod.com.  The Samsung PS2 doesn't look half bad either, though capped at 8GB (what the fuck is up with that?  why do so few players go to 16GB?) and has a touch interface which I'd prefer to avoid.  If it weren't for the touch thing, I'd probably just grab it.

Getting really sick of this.  It shouldn't be half this hard to buy a decent fucking MP3 player.

EDIT x2 - I may have found the answer.  Nothing has sounded more appealing to me than that little guy so far.  I think we may have a winner at long last.

[gpw11]

Does anybody know anything about Creative's ZEN players?  Thanks to the handy site that Hoob linked to, I was reading some reviews and stuff, and that one sounds pretty much like a perfect fit, but I'm concerned with the white screens of death that have been reported, mostly because people have said that once they get them, there's no fixing them.  And Creative has pissed me off many times lately with the way they've gone on with their PC sound cards and driver updates, so I don't know if I'm willing to place my trust in this area.  The iRiver clix2 looked awesome as well, though I'd have to settle for 8 gigs with that one, and it only half-supports drag-and-drop functionality.  But it looks really, really nifty...

I have owned quite a few Creative players.  Two Muvos and a Zen (I think).  I like them a lot as they have all the features I need, have drag and drop capability, and are easy to navigate.  I never had a problem with either Muvo (and I put those things through a lot), but haven't really owned the Zen Vision: M for long enough to really say (maybe 7-8 months) anything of value.

I have run into two easily fixable problems with it. First the battery started to refuse to hold a full charge.  All I had to do was run it down completely and then recharge it completely and it hasn't happened again.  Second, it has frozen on me once or twice, but it does have a pin-push reset button which fixes that right up.  All in all it's hard to say. I bought the motherfucker refurbished for like $100 (I think) so I'm certainly happy with it, but it's also the only hard-drive based player I've owned so I might not be the best person to ask.  I fully stand behind their smaller flash based players through (micro players, I don't know about anything they have in the 8GB+ flash range).

[iPPi]

I have a Creative Zen Micro.  It's a 4 or 5GB HDD player.  I've had no issues with mine and been using it for several years.  It no longer sees any use from me since I just use my cell phone as an mp3 player nowadays.  A 1GB card usually suffices for the music I need, and if need be, I just swap music in and out of the cell phone.  Pretty easy and painless.

Back to the subject though, I really liked the Zen Micro while I used it.  It had a couple of minor problems, and the earbuds broke really quickly and I was never able to find a good set of earbuds that sounded 'right' connected to the Zen Micro, but it was a really good player when I got it 4 or 5 years ago...

[Quemaqua]

Well, I picked up the Cowon D2, and I'm completely, totally happy with it.  It's awesome.  I don't mind the touch interface at all, apparently, and the only actual downside I can find to the thing is that it charges via USB, which I hate.  I plug these things in all the time just for a couple seconds to throw shit on there, so I'm disappointed about that because I didn't know before I ordered.  It also has an AC adapter, which charges it faster... just wish there was a way to turn off the USB charging.  Still, that's the only negative.  Otherwise the thing has awesome codec support, true drag-and-drop, 16 gigs of space, file browsing and browsing by tags, album art display, FM tuner, FM recording, a really crisp display that shows pictures really nicely, and plenty of other random crap.  And it's even tinier than it looked!  The thing is fucking small.  Combine that with the great battery life and great sound quality, this thing kicks the shit out of pretty much every MP3 player I've ever seen.

[Cobra951]

Topping off a charge is only a bad thing with some battery technologies like nickel-cadmium.  I think Lithium-Ion is OK with this, and that's probably what you have.  Nickel-metal-hydride (NiMH) I also think is OK with this.

[scottws]

Ni-Cad batteries suffer from horrible memory effect.  You have to fully discharge them before recharging them at all or they are basically ruined.

NiMH batteries can suffer from the memory effect too, but the effect is significantly reduced in comparison to Ni-Cad.

Li-Ion batteries basically do not suffer from this problem, but their deficiency is a relatively short lifespan.  I read somewhere that they only last on average about 300 recharge cycles or so.

[gpw12]

Yeah, I'm 99% positive that the only widespread technology that doesn't agree well with top off charging is nickel-cadmium. I know for a fact that Lithium-Ion is top off friendly. Worse case scenario is that it will temporarily 'forget' it's capacity, in which case you have to completely drain and recharge it to 'reboot'.  I think it's very rare with low-output electronics, but somewhat more common with high capacity, high output batteries used for cordless tools.

[Quemaqua]

Well, I found an interesting thread on this very subject.  Supposedly you're much better off if you top off and don't let the thing drain.  I read this from a number of other sources as well.  Your big worry is letting the thing go dry, in which case you drastically reduce the battery's potency.  It looks like older versions of various Cowon iaudio firmwares allowed you to disable USB charging, but the US stuff hasn't for a while, or possibly ever (this may have been limited to European and Asian firmwares, not sure).  But everyone says not to worry about it since it isn't a problem and simply means that you'll have even less chance of accidentally draining your battery, which is the primary thing you don't want to do.

Apparently the thing is a lithium polymer battery, though it took me more searching than I expected to find that out.  I guess most people don't care about battery types.  Most sites, even detailed review sites, just listed battery life, not type.  Sadly, the battery here isn't user-replaceable, unless you want to take the thing apart and try your hand at it (I've seen a number of sites with pictures demonstrating how to do this), though I guess there's a way to send the thing back to Cowon and have them do it for you for a small fee.

[WindAndConfusion]

Li-Ion batteries basically do not suffer from this problem, but their deficiency is a relatively short lifespan.  I read somewhere that they only last on average about 300 recharge cycles or so.

Something like that. My current cell phone's first battery died after ten months, which worked out to less than a hundred c/d cycles, but the replacement battery has so far lasted about twice as long. There's also an MP3 player that lives in my car that has survived what must be nearing a thousand c/d cycles.