New MP3 player recommendations

[chris_r]

Alright, woke up this morning and looked out the front of the house to find the van wide open. Turns out that I hadn't locked it last night somehow. Go through the van and I find that the only thing missing is my trusty 160GB iPod Classic. Pricks left my GPS and all my other important stuff behind though.

Anyway, so now I'm looking for an alternative MP3 player to the iPod Classic, as I refuse to pay the Apple tax for something that's been around for as long as the Classic has. Just wondering if any of you guys know of something decent (that isn't Apple branded) that'll hold at least 40-50GB of music and is as easy to use. I mainly use it in the cars, as opposed to those other drink coasters we were all used to a some point in our lives. And whilst the SRi's head unit has a USB port, the head unit in the iLoad doesn't (has just a single AUX port) and at this stage, I have no intentions of replacing it with one that does for the remainder of time I will own that POS.

[danny82much]

Hey mate off the subject what's going on with the GSI gearbox I'm in urgent need of it, when can I pick it up off you?


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[eddysdaman]

Cowon X7 might be an alternative.

Was looking at this a while back myself, simply put there's almost noone doing HDD mp3 players anymore. They're all ssd and hella expensive if you actually need a decent amount of space.

EDIT: turns out they don't make the X7 now anymore either.

only real options then are SD card based MP3 players that support 64/128gb memory cards.
Cowon & (Sandisk) Sansa are what come to mind for brands

[chris_r]

Cowon X7 might be an alternative.

Was looking at this a while back myself, simply put there's almost noone doing HDD mp3 players anymore. They're all ssd and hella expensive if you actually need a decent amount of space.

EDIT: turns out they don't make the X7 now anymore either.

only real options then are SD card based MP3 players that support 64/128gb memory cards.
Cowon & (Sandisk) Sansa are what come to mind for brands

Yeah, that's all I seem to come up with too. And you can't even find a second hand or refurbed Cowon X7 anywhere either. And the fact the iPod Classic 160GB is still around the $270 mark, they can get stuffed. My other gripe with Apple products, is iTunes (it's CRAP!)

I have been thinking of these smaller MP3 players with expandable storage, but then I had this brainfart that said I still have a functional Galaxy S2 gathering dust in a drawer. Maybe grab said SD card and load it into the old phone. Samsung used to sell the Galaxy Player 4.0/5.0 which was nothing more than a Galaxy S that couldn't make phone calls, so there's no reason it wouldn't work with the S2. Maybe load a bare minimum type ROM on it and use some sort of media player software.

[chris_r]

Decided I'll go with the Sansa Clip Zip and a 64GB microSD card, mainly as I wanted something similar to the iPod Classic in terms of use with physical buttons. Think I might install Rockbox on it too and have a bit of a play around with it. I've also heard that the Sansa players usually have a song limit around 8000. My collection sits around 5500 now, but I am probably gonna cull a lot of the crap out of it anyway.

[SilentShout]

Anyone remember the Creative Zen Vision M ??

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ZenVisionM.png

I used to have one of these back in the day. Still miss it too. Would happily give up my gen 4 ipod touch for one of these :P

Strang huh.

[dutchy]

Got one of the first ones. They were made available for free to people within the music industry. Believe they were called Diamond Rio. Still have it somewhere.

[chris_r]

I used to have an iRiver H10 once upon a time, was a good little unit and worked well. Had 3 iPods following that (a 5.5G 30G, a 80GB Classic then a 160GB Classic, the first one died, the latter two were both stolen). I've now had the Sansa Clip Zip for about a week and a half now. I had no idea it wasn't much bigger than your average USB flash drive, but it does the job. Sound quality is much better than the iPods too. The other upside is, it's easy to hide and less likely to be pinched if I somehow manage to leave my van unlocked again.

And hopefully once my accountant is finished with my tax lodgements, I will be replacing the van anyway in the next couple of months. As I've noticed from my extensive research, pretty much every van on the market (and the two that are on my shortlist) has provisions for using flash drives, so there was really no point in getting another iPod. In the SRi I have a JVC head unit capable of playing off flash drives, so I've never really needed it in that car either. And as I said, with the iLoad about to turfed, there's no point on getting a new head unit for it either.

But as I have said for now, the Sansa is a great little unit ($72 on fleabay) and works a treat with a big microSD card. Not the best interface I've used, but set up some playlists and you're good to go.