Need new player to replace ZVM - suggestions??

[wulfin]

Hey all, as much as I hate to be one of those "help me decide" types, here I am.

My Zen Vision M finally died and now I'm on the market for a new one and have done research and have decided my ZVM really was the best player for me ... But ah well.

As simple as my needs are, I'm having a tough time finding a player. They are:

- large capacity (50-100gbs preferably)
- fm tuner
- good sound quality
- long battery life (I always got 16 hours out of my last)
- would like FLAC support, but not mandatory

I don't need video, Internet, etc etc. and I sync with mediamonkey, so zunes don't work for me that way either.

Unfortunately I've noticed that all the large capacity players are all about video, but I just need music. If it ends up with vid. capabilities that's fine as long as it has decent battery life.

I've looked at cowons, archos, creative, and read reviews but am I missing anything obvious, etc? ... What is the best suggestion??

[CrowdAds]

[This]

From all the research I've been doing lately, there isn't a player that matches all those needs currently.

The Archos is pretty big for a music player thanks to all the video/internet stuff it does, but it has a huge capacity and supports most formats including FLAC - however it has reportedly mediocre sound quality.

The Cowon S9 is supposed to have great sound quality, long battery life, and supports FLAC but tops out at 32gb as do all the other flash-based players.

As far as I can tell, for large storage your options are pretty limited. Archos, iPod, or Zune.

Or if you're into digging up old models, I think the Cowon X5 was a hard-drive based player that went up to 60gb. Not sure where you'd find one though, I did a quick look around and couldn't see any for sale.

[a_tumiwa]

yeah... maybe only Cowon X5
Cowon X5 has short battery life, maybe Cowon X5L , its 3x than X5 CMIIW

[The DarkSide]

It's expensive, but here's a few X5's for sale: http://www.google.com/products?q=cow...N&hl=en&tab=wf

And X5L as well: http://www.google.com/products?q=cowon+iaudio+x5l&hl=en

[copeys]

What about flash players with SD cards up to 32GB. I am not familiar with all, but it may help the OP. Wulfin, would you use a player with an integrated SD card?? There would be several more options out there for some players if so

There are also the archos players, but I hear they are having some problems, but not to sure on that. Going from 60-250GB HDD.

[wulfin]

I was worried that my options were limited

I honestly haven't given any thought to flash players with an SD card. If itgives me better options I may consider it (the last flash player I had was an iriver 512mb). I've had my ZVM since they came out so I've been "out of the game" for a while.

Other than the obvious storage method, what are the diffrences? Maybe I'll do some quick research on that once I get to work (I'm on the bus).

TheDarkSide - the ones for sale there are only 20-30 gbs... So not large enough. (I travel a lot and spend much time at a remote cabin so I like to carry a large variety of music with me)