What mp3 player should i get?

Post by **Triton** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 11:10 pm

Ok so heres the situation. I currently have a zune 30 and i LOVE it, the mp3 player itsself is FANTASTIC, its great, but the 3.0 firmware removes the quicklist feature and there is no easy way(or any way i can find at all) to downgrade the firmware. the second issue i have is I THINKTHE ZUNE SOFTWARE IS TERRIBLE AND I HATE IT WITH THE WHITE HOT PASSION OF A THOUSAND SUNS! so i am looking for a new mp3 player and am going to sell my zune (perfect working condition, a bit dinged up, refurbed with box and everything) for 100$ so here is what i need:

must be at least 16gb storage
must have on the fly playlist creation (like quicklist in zune)
cannot cost more than ~120$ shipped (used is fine)
must be able to play video (nice to have)
not Chinese MP4 crap (meizu being exception maybe)

so please feel free to suggest mp3 players to me! i loved my zune but the horrible software and removal of a much used feature kills it for me. i havent added or removed any music from it in months (last time i tried the software copulate everything up and wound up deleting music from my zune

ghosstt · Post by **ghosstt** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 11:24 pm

I haven't checked up on it recently, but iRiver makes some good stuff. Not sure on prices though.

RockNRoll! · Post by **RockNRoll!** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 12:12 am

Creative Zens are pretty much the best mp3 players you can get. I have a Zen Vision M and both the player and software are fantastic and I haven't had any problems with it at all. Mine was refurbished and around $150 but there are other creative zens out there that are cheaper.

grossaffe · Post by **grossaffe** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 12:16 am

http://www.froobi.com/SanDisk-Sansa-quo ... 32297.html

That is a Sandik Sansa e280 v1 bundle. I was gonna suggest you get that mp3 player, the 8GB microSDHC card (giving you 8GB on-board flash memory and 8GB microSDHC memory), and load rockbox onto it, but it appears that that bundles already does all of that for you.

If you're not familiar with rockbox, its a third-party firmware. It supports on-the-fly playlists and mpeg video playback.

other notable features:
Doom
GBC emulator
various other games (pac man, bejeweled, solitaire, sokoban, sudoku, space invaders, etc.)
fully customizable interface: create your own While Playing Screen and menu (or download someone else's), and if you're up to it, compile your own build of rockbox.

one thing to note, though. The original firmware for the device does not support the 8GB microSDHC card, only rockbox will. Also

This is just something to consider, I don't know how much control you want versus ease of use.

Post by **Triton** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 12:25 am

ideally i am looking for something with the ease of use of the zune but without all the flaws (lacking on the fly playlisting or quicklist, horrid software etc) ive been looking at the 16gb cowon S9 but at 240$ im not too sure

that bundle is sold out

i would consider it if it werent tho!

grossaffe · Post by **grossaffe** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 12:37 am

Triton wrote:ideally i am looking for something with the ease of use of the zune but without all the flaws (lacking on the fly playlisting or quicklist, horrid software etc) ive been looking at the 16gb cowon S9 but at 240$ im not too sure

that bundle is sold out i would consider it if it werent tho!

hmm... I suppose you could try and find another sansa e280 and another 8GB microSDHC, but you'd have to be careful not to get a v2 since the rockbox team hasn't cracked that one yet.

or perhaps you could just find yourself any old sansa e200 series (again, not v2) and get a 16GB microSDHC card. You could probably find an e250 (2gb onboard) or an e260 (4gb onboard and probably the most popular) for pretty cheap these days.

one way to tell if its a v1 or v2, see if you can find out what firmware version it has.

v1: 01.xx.xx
v2: 03.xx.xx

most refurbs are probably a v1.
http://cgi.ebay.com/Refurbished-Sandisk ... dZViewItem
(you could ask the seller for version info to be sure)
http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?s ... caid=17902

You should look into rockbox before just diving in, though, I think. make sure its what you want. With all the features it has, it isn't going to be as simple to navigate as other firmwares will be (though I don't think it'll be too big of a problem for the tech savvy population of the ben heck community).

timmeh87 · Post by **timmeh87** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 5:14 am

grossaffe wrote:
Triton wrote:ideally i am looking for something with the ease of use of the zune but without all the flaws (lacking on the fly playlisting or quicklist, horrid software etc) ive been looking at the 16gb cowon S9 but at 240$ im not too sure

that bundle is sold out i would consider it if it werent tho!
hmm... I suppose you could try and find another sansa e280 and another 8GB microSDHC, but you'd have to be careful not to get a v2 since the rockbox team hasn't cracked that one yet.

or perhaps you could just find yourself any old sansa e200 series (again, not v2) and get a 16GB microSDHC card. You could probably find an e250 (2gb onboard) or an e260 (4gb onboard and probably the most popular) for pretty cheap these days.

one way to tell if its a v1 or v2, see if you can find out what firmware version it has.

v1: 01.xx.xx
v2: 03.xx.xx

most refurbs are probably a v1.
http://cgi.ebay.com/Refurbished-Sandisk ... dZViewItem
(you could ask the seller for version info to be sure)
http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?s ... caid=17902

You should look into rockbox before just diving in, though, I think. make sure its what you want. With all the features it has, it isn't going to be as simple to navigate as other firmwares will be (though I don't think it'll be too big of a problem for the tech savvy population of the ben heck community).

Yeah I have always recommended Sansas, but:

- The original firmware on the E200 series takes forever to scan the music on your SD card, on EACH startup. takes like 1 minute per gig
- As mentioned, >2g SD cards only supported in rockbox.
- Also, the original firmware is pretty easy to use, if only because its really simple and almost somewhat lacking. at least it has a custom EQ but its only five bands. I didnt care until I saw all of the tons of settings rockbox opened up... Why cant they pay some programmers to add more buttons, when some CS kids can do it in their spare time? Oh yeah RB does like 20 common audio codecs (through plugins) instead of like two. Blast the lazy sandisk mofos.

So I got a refurb 8gb "view" player, which appeared identical with almost the same firmware, and I was excited. Unfortunately every public version of the firmware has serious battery, crash, and lag or skip issues and Im pretty dissapointed. Hopefully rockbox comes along for it soon. The hardware is solid though, if not a bit too large and glued shut.

I dunno what else to tell you. I like flash a lot though and you can get 32gb of it these days. If you are cool with only 8gb (compress your giant 320kbps songs doods) then get the e200 serious cause they are super cheap and rockbox is really great. And so is battery performance.

SonyPortableizer · Post by **SonyPortableizer** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 8:20 am

Ipod end of discussion

themadhacker · Post by **themadhacker** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 8:40 am

ipod classic is great, but more than $120. I think you could get a 80 gig ipod video (just as good as ipod classic) for that price.

Post by **Black Six** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 9:19 am

I'd suggest you find a 30GB 5th gen iPod. Plays video, supports on the fly playlist support, has more storage than you're looking for, and is, of course, easy to use.

I don't have any experience with the other MP3 players suggested here, but once you start talking about cracking it to put 3rd party firmware on, it just seems like you're asking for instability and trouble. That's just my opinion though.

khaag · Post by **khaag** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 10:31 am

Ipod obviously. Just get one used on ebay.

Post by **bicostp** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 10:43 am

Used iPod + replacement battery = exactly what you want. You can usually find previous-gen iPods pretty cheap. Unfortunately, the only models on Apple's refurb page with the amount of storage you want are more than $120. Try eBay. Any full-size model from the Video on up will do what you want. You could probably even hack one to take rechargeable AAs if you wanted to.

If you didn't care about video, I would have recommended an iPod Mini, because you could throw in a big CompactFlash card.

This place sells batteries and replacement tools:
http://www.ipodjuice.com/

Jongamer · Post by **Jongamer** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 11:21 am

ewwww iPod.

At least go for the Creative Zen, iPods are overrated (who's is the dumb screw who thought of spinning your finger in a Circle to go up and down?)

Only ipod I would EVER get is a iPod touch, any other iPod I wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole.

I am Personally a Zune kinda guy, and the Software has never let me down. Usually the software only lets you down, if you did something stupid to cause it to erase all the songs off your Zune.

Post by **Triton** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 11:49 am

I just find the way the zune software handles a lot of things to be ass backwards and straight up retarded, on all my computers itsLAGLAGLAG runs like crap, its ugly (doesnt match ANYTHING ELSE by m$) unintuitive and buggy. the main reason is the firmware 3.0 got rid of quicklists which was my favorite feature

as to the rampant ipod fanboism the last ipod i used and liked was the 4th gen non video and the touch, the rest are ok i guess but not much better than the zune in the "tied to bad/mediocre software" fortunatly the ipod can be used with mediamonkey and stuff

Negative_Creep · Post by **Negative_Creep** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 11:50 am

iPod is awesome. I use a Shuffle because they are small and convient