Looking for a New MP3 Player

Ceph · Post by **Ceph** » Tue Jan 06, 2009 5:47 pm

Please help me:

All I want is one that supports folders, has a proper resume function (so it will continue playing right where I left off when I turn it back on), uses (rechargeable) AAA batteries, and has between 2 and 4 GB of space. I don't want one with a hdd, and I don't need one that can play videos and has a huge display. I want it to be small and light.

Even though that sounds simple, apparently it is not. Lots of players have built-in batteries (which suck, especially while travelling because you can't simply replace an empty one), don't support folders (only id3 tags) and don't have resume.

Lordstar · Post by **Lordstar** » Tue Jan 06, 2009 6:02 pm

well having something which takes batteries rathen just just having a battery inside it is going to increase the weight and actual size of the thing. creative MP3 players do all that you need but i dont think they go as low as a 4 my frined has a USB dongle which also has ear phone port and a basic play so you can play mp3 off of it but i dont think it returns to the spot in the track.

Ceph · Post by **Ceph** » Tue Jan 06, 2009 6:47 pm

Which model are you talking about? There are dozens of different MP3 players by Creative; most (all?) seem to have internal battery packs, and they also have problems with folders.

Lordstar · Post by **Lordstar** » Tue Jan 06, 2009 6:49 pm

I had a zen micro a while back and never had problems with folders. yes it was an internal battery.

The one my friend had was a really cheap random make and took one battery i will ask him about it but i think it was some super market home brand one. sorry i did not make that clear

FIL · Post by **FIL** » Tue Jan 06, 2009 7:21 pm

Some of Creative's players take AAAs, my Zen Nano Plus does. That would almost fit your needs except the capacity is smaller than what you're after, pretty sure they only go up to 1GB. Muvos take batteries though I think.

jonny5 · Post by **jonny5** » Tue Jan 06, 2009 7:25 pm

2 gig creative muvo....uses 1 AAA......no problem with folders....restarts from where you left off.....exactly what you are after

used to have one a few years ago for skating...dunno if they are still available new or if they have changed the design

nem · Post by **nem** » Tue Jan 06, 2009 7:49 pm

The sound quality on the old MUVO (N200) is bloody terrible.

I was eyeing up a Sandisk Sansa for my next player, but that has an internal rechargeable battery, so that's out.

Ceph · Post by **Ceph** » Tue Jan 06, 2009 7:52 pm

jonny5 wrote:2 gig creative muvo....uses 1 AAA......no problem with folders....restarts from where you left off.....exactly what you are after

used to have one a few years ago for skating...dunno if they are still available new or if they have changed the design

The one you are talking about is called Creative MuVo V100. It got very postive reviews and the sound quality is supposed to be very good. And it's really cheap now.

Sounds perfect indeed, thanks!

EDIT: There's one disatvantage: Apparently it's only got USB 1.1 (=1.5 MB/s). Oh well, I think I'll take it anyway.

jonny5 · Post by **jonny5** » Tue Jan 06, 2009 8:45 pm

yup thats the one.....its takes a beating too.....i pounded my old one.....fell on it, dropped it....

it finally died a few months ago.....it was in my pocket while skating and i fell off a handrail and smoked my hip off it....directly on the MP3 player......its dust now......

i reached in my pocket and there was some electrical debris and a battery.....lol

you will want better headphones tho

indstr · Post by **indstr** » Tue Jan 06, 2009 9:43 pm

Ceph, the Sansa Slotmusic player might hit the spot for you?

http://www.sansa.com/players/sansa_slotMusic

The player itself is $20 and you can buy drm-free albums on 1GB memory cards for $15 each, however you can put your own files on there as well. I also think they use AAA batteries. I've seen em at walmart. May be worth checking out, get a couple of cards for it or perhaps a bigger memory card and you're set.

quoth09 · Post by **quoth09** » Tue Jan 06, 2009 9:46 pm

I have had 2 Zen Micro's; a Zen Micro 6GB, and I currently have a Zen Micro Photo 8GB. I only got rid of the 6GB b/c I upgraded. The only real difference between the 2 is that one will show photos.

Both were/are great, and I am actually looking at possibly buying something larger by them soon. I really wish the flash memory players would go higher than 32gb, and an iPod is not an option for me. I don't really care about video at this point personally.
Probably going to end up having to get one of their products no longer in production.

iatneH · Post by **iatneH** » Tue Jan 06, 2009 10:28 pm

I think the Sandisk Sansa m-series fits your bill. I had one and was very pleased with it. I upgraded to their e250 model, but to be honest the m-series is much more stable and lightning quick with only about 2-3 seconds for a cold boot. Not even with Rockbox installed can my e-series come close to the speed and reliability of the m-series. Pretty good running time on a single AAA battery.

They should be dirt cheap now too.

quoth09 · Post by **quoth09** » Tue Jan 06, 2009 10:38 pm

I don't know about the other Sansa products, but I purchased a 16GB Sansa View when they first came out (end of 2007), and they were riddled with bugs. The company was saying there was not anything wrong with the products, but there were tons of people complaining. They shortly announced they were doing upgrades and software fixes not too long after that, AFTER I had already taken mine back to the store. I don't know what got fixed, but I'm never buying one again.

I really hope that company has done something about their products, b/c that was not the only line that had issues. Then again, Creatives first MP3 players were garbage, so companies can change.

Ceph · Post by **Ceph** » Tue Jan 06, 2009 11:17 pm

I just purchased that Creative MuVo V100; it was pretty cheap.

indstr wrote:Ceph, the Sansa Slotmusic player might hit the spot for you?

http://www.sansa.com/players/sansa_slotMusic

The player itself is $20 and you can buy drm-free albums on 1GB memory cards for $15 each, however you can put your own files on there as well. I also think they use AAA batteries. I've seen em at walmart. May be worth checking out, get a couple of cards for it or perhaps a bigger memory card and you're set.

Thanks, but that player doesn't even have a display, that's not what I was looking for.

iatneH wrote:I think the Sandisk Sansa m-series fits your bill. I had one and was very pleased with it. I upgraded to their e250 model, but to be honest the m-series is much more stable and lightning quick with only about 2-3 seconds for a cold boot. Not even with Rockbox installed can my e-series come close to the speed and reliability of the m-series. Pretty good running time on a single AAA battery.

They should be dirt cheap now too.

Yeah, SanDisk Sansa m250 seems to be good; too bad it doesn't support folders (all files are listed in a single directory). If that Creative MuVo V100 player isn't to my liking, then I'll try out a Sansa m 250 next.

Thanks for your input!

indstr · Post by **indstr** » Tue Jan 06, 2009 11:43 pm

Put rockbox on whatever you get dude. That's what I did for my ipod nano, because I too, am lost without directories. FUCK id3 format. Oh, you want to find all songs with a certain genre? No, I fucking don't apple, I want to be able to browse directly to the songs that I fucking put on my fucking player and be able to know where they are because I PUT THEM THERE

agghhgh

iatneH · Post by **iatneH** » Tue Jan 06, 2009 11:53 pm

quoth09 wrote:I don't know about the other Sansa products, but I purchased a 16GB Sansa View when they first came out (end of 2007), and they were riddled with bugs. The company was saying there was not anything wrong with the products, but there were tons of people complaining. They shortly announced they were doing upgrades and software fixes not too long after that, AFTER I had already taken mine back to the store. I don't know what got fixed, but I'm never buying one again.

Agreed, and my e250 is quite disappointing with the official Sandisk firmware. It's much better with Rockbox though I still get an occasional system crash. The m-series is very stable though, which is why I stuck with Sandisk when buying a new player, expecting the same high level of reliability.

Ceph, I am fairly certain the m250 should support folders. You should be able to copy folder structures to the player in both MTP and MSC transfer modes, as well as browse your songs by various components of the ID3 tags. I should still have my m240 kicking around if you need me to double-check, although it might not be relevant anymore if you're happy with your new player :)

One more thing - the m-series displayed tag info with foreign characters easily and right out of the box, whereas the e-series needed a lot of hoop-jumping to do it.

edit: My mistake, I had misunderstood what exactly you meant by folders. So NOT by ID3, right? I'll really have to double check whether I can get a file view on my m240. I guess it wasn't really a problem for me because I take great care in tagging my files.

jonny5 · Post by **jonny5** » Tue Jan 06, 2009 11:54 pm

i used to be a big creative supporter until the zen micro video....had 2 of them just die and stop working in under 6 months.....and because they became cheaper over that period, when i finally said screw this and wanted to exchange it for something else entirely it was worth almost $90 less than i payed originally....fuckiing futureshop bitches

i bought an archos 404 30 gig video player.....never looked back.....its not pocket sized...but it goes in my bag anyways......and it has 640X480 video on a 3.5 inch screen and supports pretty much anything drag and drop.....and most importantly it supports folders for music

quoth09 · Post by **quoth09** » Wed Jan 07, 2009 1:16 am

jonny5 wrote:i used to be a big creative supporter until the zen micro video....had 2 of them just die and stop working in under 6 months.....and because they became cheaper over that period, when i finally said screw this and wanted to exchange it for something else entirely it was worth almost $90 less than i payed originally....fuckiing futureshop bitches

i bought an archos 404 30 gig video player.....never looked back.....its not pocket sized...but it goes in my bag anyways......and it has 640X480 video on a 3.5 inch screen and supports pretty much anything drag and drop.....and most importantly it supports folders for music

I have been on and off the looking at Archos boat. They seem to sport nice products, but I keep on reading bad reviews on their products that tend to steer me away from it all.

The Zen Vision W is very similar to the Archos 404, etc. line though.

Ceph · Post by **Ceph** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 1:51 pm

Thank you jonny5, I've been using the Creative MuVo V100 for ~2 weeks now, and it's exactly what I wanted. One rechargable AAA lasts for a long time, resume is perfect (it automatically continues playing exactly where you turned it off when you switch it back on), sound quality is very good (I'm not using the earphones that came with it) it supports folders and it's light and small. If you are looking for an inexpensive, good quality no-nonsesne mp3 player, then this is it.

jonny5 · Post by **jonny5** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 2:36 pm

glad you like it....i will probably be picking up another for myself in the spring for skating.....the archos is definitely way too big and too expensive to risk breaking while skating.....

and the poster earlier who mentioned issues with archos hdwe......what exactly have you heard....ive never had any problems with mine.....and the archos crushes the vision w...double the resolution and supports way more video and audio formats

and best part is no software....straight drag and drop...and the newer models are even touch screen

FRO · Post by **FRO** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 2:39 pm

I bought my wife an 8GB flash-based Zune for her birthday in December, and she loves it. I was impressed w/ the little screen, the ease of putting music on there, and the fact that it will do both WMA & MP3 formats. I'm not a fan of the Zune app by any means, but the device itself is a nice little player.

Lordstar · Post by **Lordstar** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 3:28 pm

yeah when my wallets a little fatter I think im going to give a zune a go.

Jockel · Post by **Jockel** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 6:42 pm

My girlfriend just bought herself a pretty neat MP3-Player with 16gb - the Sony NWZ-S638F.

The 8gb version can be had for 105€, so it's an ok price, considering the fact that it comes with pretty expensive in-ear buds.
Good thing about this player: it lasts up to 40 hours and the sound quality is one of the best there is.
I've got an 120gb iPod classic myself, but to someone who doesn't need that much storage i can absolutely recommend the sony player.

KBZ · Post by **KBZ** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 7:06 pm

I can't believe no one mentioned any Cowon players.

Their sounds quality trumps anything by creative IMO, have some of the best codec support ever, support browsing by folders, and connects via UMS/UMC mode.

I'd recommend the Iaudio7 as it's nice and small, has all the features you want except for rechargeable batteries. But With 60hours of batter life, I don't think you'll be hurting too bad.

I went with a D2 as I'm a fan of expandable integrated storage via sdhc.

there's also the smaller U5 and U3 which are both great players, but I wouldn't bother with anything under 40hr battery life personally.

jonny5 · Post by **jonny5** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 8:24 pm

those look pretty cool...never heard of them.....niceform factor/size tho....whats the pricepoint?

still only 320X240 for video tho...what video codecs does it support?

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 8:29 pm

git one of them taco talkie things, does mp3 and doesnt afraid of games neither

I wonder if any mp3 players will be able to connect via e-SATA for transfers - would be overkill for playback, I assume, even of video at that rate, but would make for faster sync. SD isn't bad though.

edit: doesn't look particularly portable. No brand name, just some random Spanish eBay.

KBZ · Post by **KBZ** » Tue Jan 20, 2009 6:17 am

jonny5 wrote:those look pretty cool...never heard of them.....niceform factor/size tho....whats the pricepoint?

still only 320X240 for video tho...what video codecs does it support?

The D2 isn't meant for video, but it plays it cause it can. I you're looking for a video player, I'd recommend the A3

All of cowon's stuff tends to be a bit pricier than what's offered by apple, ms, and creative. However, you can rest assured knowing that the money you spend goes towards a premium product as opposed to successful marketing.

I will say that they are known for taking a while to turn their firmware into something as stable as creative's, so it's never a great idea to go for the latest thing. All the ones I've mentioned have very solid firmware.