MP3 Players

What is a well priced, robust MP3 player that someone can recommend? I have been inspired by the other thread, and will get 1. I dont want to be spending mega dosh, so anything less than, say 150 quid (prob 280 dollars, plus things cost more here), or if they are battery powered, what ones and costs are good from over here.

(the US, strange little place over the water. people…weird) :slight_smile:

iPod, or Shuffle by Apple. They’re the best no matter what all the Rio fans say.

The I-Pod Mini is the best invention since the wheel.

I have an iPod and went with the 40 GB model, which I love, so I am with rainjack on this one. The iPod is the one many attempt to imitate, but no one truly duplicates. The iPod has a rechargeable battery, a boatload of storage (depending on which size you need… the 40GB holds about 10,000 songs and I am at about 3,000… gives me something to shoot for) and its interface is just so intuitive. Also, I like the iTunes service a lot for buying my music, so I am a fan all around.

The only knocks on the iPod is that it can be pricey (depending on how much storage you want) and that the battery does need to be replaced. Some people have it go 2 years before the need, but I am at about 1 year and I can tell it is not quite as robust as it used to be.

Apparently the newer models have significantly remedied this issue, though.

When you go to the Apple site, does it have the same U.S. pricing or is it in British pounds?

Kuz

I own a Rio…

I like it. Mine uses flash memory instead of a harddrive like the iPod so it dosent have the storage capacity, but it is expandable with SD cards.

But yeah, if I were to do it again, I would deal with the size and get an iPod.

jesus i said it before
ipod shuffle.
reasons…
two sizes the 125 song for ?70
and the 250 song for ?100.
battery life 12 hours (the ipod mini is only 8)
easy recharge …straight into the usb port of an ‘on’ computer/laptop
size…of your middle finger, but slightly fatter, the ipod mini , i felt was too cimbersome not to get crushed by wandering dumbell.
plus i only use it for the gym and whats the point in 1000 songs, but then whats the point in 250 even

p.s argos/dixons/currys ipod mini ?150

I looked at the ipod, and granted it does hold alot of songs… but its a hard drive and prone to skip. And theres one thing I beat around and thats my flash MP3 player and it never skips.

jaystyles

They just came out with a NEW, 6G I-Pod Mini that now has 18 hours of battery life (instead of 8) and holds, I think, 1,500 songs instead of 1,000. AND, it’s the same price as the 4G Mini used to be ($250)! (The 4G is now only $200).

with the i pod shuffle, how much is it in the states, and does it re charge through the USB. If this is so, could i not get one from the US? i am sure it would be cheaper.

how disposable do you want it to be?

http://www.ipodsdirtysecret.com/

Those are some pretty funny movies.

By the way, you can get a solar powered battery charger for iPods.

Hard drives aren’t like CDs, they don’t skip. If they do, you’re in trouble. Plus, the iPod queues songs into memory from the hard drive, rather than playing directly from it.

[quote]jaystyles wrote:
I looked at the ipod, and granted it does hold alot of songs… but its a hard drive and prone to skip. And theres one thing I beat around and thats my flash MP3 player and it never skips.

jaystyles[/quote]

[quote]jaystyles wrote:
I looked at the ipod, and granted it does hold alot of songs… but its a hard drive and prone to skip. And theres one thing I beat around and thats my flash MP3 player and it never skips.

jaystyles[/quote]

Ugh… once again…

Hard-drive-based MP3 players do not “skip” except in very extreme circumstances. This isn’t a CD player. The hard drive is hardly ever spinning. It only spins up long enough to load a few songs into memory, then spins back down until it has to do it again. The songs are played out of memory, just like a flash-based player. Normally, the hard drive is totally turned off.

And even if you do jiggle it while the hard drive is spinning, the heads are microscopically small, compared to the big, heavy heads on a CD player. This means that they take a LOT more force to move, and it means can re-seek the missed data much more quickly.

Because it plays music out of memory, it’s impossible to make it skip during normal play. The unlikely exception to this is if you’re jiggling the thing vigorously when it spins back up to read in more music. In this case, it’s possible it could skip if you don’t stop. I.e. you’re running, shaking it in just the right way, and you don’t stop. Once you stop, it should read in the next batch of songs successfully, and continue playing without skipping. I seriously doubt you could make an iPod skip while lifting weights, even if it did spin up right in the middle of a squat or something. You’re just not vibrating it enough. I have never heard my iPod skip.

Does no one here use a Dell Pocket DJ or one of the other Dell products? Seems to me they would be a good option. Good price plus you can load it with songs from Napster instead of i-tunes.

Does anyone have issues with the lack of a visual display on the Shuffle? I currently have an MP3 player (flash type) with 256 MB (about 100 songs) that is nice and small and about 1.5 years old. There are some things about it that I don’t like (battery life is about 6 hours, the navigation is difficult due to the design of the button). I do like the size - its about the size of the Shuffle, but it does have a visual display, so I can see how much battery life is left and if the song has paused or if some other malfunction has occurred. I’m interested to see how Shuffle users deal with no visual.

DB

I beat the holy hell out of my I-Pod Mini and the thing has never, ever skipped. I don’t think it’s physically possible.

Get the Zen Touch or the Zen micro. No matter what the ipod freaks say they are equal to the ipod (I actually think better) and significantly cheaper. The Zen Micro holds an extra gigabyte of data and the Zen Touch has an extra 10 hours of battery.

Again, as far as skipping goes, you’d have to be in extreme circumstances. I don’t believe the iPod drives are of the drop-proof variety (like with new IBM laptops), so if you were doing something bad enough to make it skip, you’d effectively destroy the drive. Hard drives have little tiny heads that have to leave a microns-thin distance between them and the plates. If the heads touch the plates, the drive is ruined. CDs are not very stiff, and easily warp and wobble due to their makeup as well as the flimsy way they’re held in place. Hard drives are much more solid, and fixed. Hard drives spin at 7000 to 10000 RPM, which is MUCH faster than CDs… CDs explode at that speed. If plates inside the HD were to wobble at those speeds, your iPod would be smithereens.

I saw the Mythbusters run cd’s at 10,000 rpm - it was pretty cool.