Looking for good flash memory mp3 player

[13x31]

So I had a 30gb iPod (5th gen) and it served me pretty well until I was very low on space. I replaced it with a new 160gb iPod, and started having problems after I loaded more music onto it. (Let's skip all the fancy details shall we?)

In short, I'm done with mp3 players (and Apple's iPods) that use a hard drive for storage and want to move to flash memory.

I do not care about the extra little features such as bluetooth, wi-fi, or radio; however, I do have these requirements:

• Enough storage to store my music (about 50-52gb) and with plenty of space leftover for more if (and when) I get more music. SD expandable mp3 players are very welcome.
• The random song function needs to work properly (one of the mp3 players I read a review on had a horrible random function).
• It needs to be able to read a playlist of some sort.
• Decently priced (Apple's 64gb iTouch is out of the question)

I think that's all that I'm looking for. I'm not really worried about the screen, for all I care it can be monochromatic as long as it displays the song, artist, and album. I'm also not too worried about battery life, since I will be charging it while I sleep at night.

The two contenders I'm currently looking at is the Creative Zen X-Fi 32gb and the Cowon O2 32gb. Neither of these two are definite picks for me, and so I am open to all other mp3 players (except for Apple).

Any sort of help will be greatly appreciated.

[CrowdAds]

[JK98]

"Enough storage to store my music (about 50-52gb) and with plenty of space leftover for more if (and when) I get more music. SD expandable mp3 players are very welcome. "

Most flash players don't have a card slot. Of those that have one, it is a micro SDHC card slot. The exceptions to this are the Cowon D2 or D2+ which has only up to 16 GB of built in memory, and the Creative Zen players which don't integrate card memory with main memory. A 32 GB Cowon J3 with a 32 GB micro SDHC card will get you to 64 GB, but it will cost you around $450-500.

The cheapest high capacity flash memory based player is the 16 GB Cowon D2+ and a 32 GB SDHC card. That will get you to 48 GB at only around $225.

The Cowon O2 is basically a video player and not an audio player.

"The O2 lacks certain audio management features many people take for granted nowadays: it has no ID3 browsing, no support for playlists, and no traditional bookmarks. "

http://www.anythingbutipod.com/archi...-o2-review.php


I guess the best strategy might be to make due with a Cowon D2+ and a 32 GB card giving you 48 GB at around $225, and waiting for some nice players with SDXC card support before upgrading from there. I am surprised that there are no players that support SDXC cards available now, although 64 GB SDXC cards are still very expensive at over $200. Hopefully they will drop to under $150 before the spring.

[13x31]

Hmm... J3 is definitely out of the question. *Wonders why Newegg doesn't sell 32gb micro SD cards*

I was also looking at the Creative Zen X-Fi2 64gb by itself, though it does have a microSD slot, and just skip having the extra memory, since the Zen doesn't address the internal and expansion memory together.

But altogether I may just wait until next year and live off mp3 cd's in my car for the time being (though it's not very easy at all).

[glove4]

The 64gb Zen X-Fi2 is pretty much exactly what you want with your specifications. Though the 64gb has an 8,000 song limit, so I have read elsewhere. I would look into this one though, it is a great pmp for your needs.

[deadohiosky]

(iirc), only apple, microsoft and creative are selling 32+ flash mp3players.

BUT: both the ms zune hd and the apple ipod touch can only be used via itunes and creative has seen its best days a long time ago.

i wouldn't recommend creative at all (altough i only ever fiddled with them for a dew mins and got tired of the UI and overall impression).

unfortunately no other company is (dares?) trying to jump the wagon, neither samsung nor sandisk, which remains a mystery to me (and samsung doesn't provide their players with sd card slots, which is a real downer)

so either you bite into the bitter sweet apple...uhm i mean orange and buy a j3 ;-) or well maybe an ipod touch


oh and i just found out that sony has 64 gb walkman? that's kind of mysterious, i didn't know that. the nwz-a847.

[JK98]

Waiting seems like a good idea, or you could get an 8 GB Clip+ and a 16 GB micro SDHC card for around $90, and have around half your music on 24 GB of storage. Imo it is nice to have a Clip+ in addition to a larger player with more storage.

[The DarkSide]

Originally Posted by deadohiosky

(iirc), only apple, microsoft and creative are selling 32+ flash mp3players.

BUT: both the ms zune hd and the apple ipod touch can only be used via itunes and creative has seen its best days a long time ago.

i wouldn't recommend creative at all (altough i only ever fiddled with them for a dew mins and got tired of the UI and overall impression).

unfortunately no other company is (dares?) trying to jump the wagon, neither samsung nor sandisk, which remains a mystery to me (and samsung doesn't provide their players with sd card slots, which is a real downer)

so either you bite into the bitter sweet apple...uhm i mean orange and buy a j3 ;-) or well maybe an ipod touch


oh and i just found out that sony has 64 gb walkman? that's kind of mysterious, i didn't know that. the nwz-a847.

The Zunes all use the Zune pc client, and the iPod's all use the iTunes pc client. As for Creative - it's a crap shoot, you may hate it or love it, the ball's in your court w/that 1.

[deadohiosky]

Originally Posted by The DarkSide

The Zunes all use the Zune pc client, and the iPod's all use the iTunes pc client. As for Creative - it's a crap shoot, you may hate it or love it, the ball's in your court w/that 1.

oh come on, of course zune doesn't use itunes i meant they use proprietary software.


well, next time i guess i have to proofread twice.

[glove4]

I forgot about the Sony Walkman A series, soon in 64gb version, but will be ridiculously expensive and will need to order from UK.

[13x31]

As far as the pc software goes, I'm using Media Monkey, and as I've read, it's a great program especially for the Creative players. Before I used Media Monkey, I was using iTunes, but when my computer played musical drive letters, I couldn't reinstall it. So I had to find an alternative, which was Media Monkey.

Hmm... The Sony nwz-a847, I think I might continue to dig around for that. I've never had any problems with my Sony CD Walkmans (well, except for the "Psyc" series, where I had problems with the headphone jack and circuit board connection that I fixed myself with a bit of solder) or any of the Sony products I've owned. And of course, Sony is a bit high on their prices, but I think I'd rather shell out the money to Sony rather than Apple.

I forgot to say that the Zunes were the exception to my open-mindedness of something new. I've never been a fan of Microsoft's products (though I do have Windows on two of five computers) and I just don't really like Microsoft all that much; it's something I can't exactly put into words well enough. Plus I've heard people have had troubles with the Zunes anyway.

I actually want to have all of my music on hand. I usually just turn the random on and let it play through all of my music, since I'm not partial to any specific part of my music library. That's also why the mp3 cd's are slowly driving me mad, I can only have about 700 MB of my 50 GB at any given time, which is usually broken down by artist or genre or something of the sort. So even if I bought something cheaper like the Clip+ or the Sansa Fuse, having only half of my music wouldn't change the situation much.

But anyway, I may also have to consider the 64gb iTouch as well, but only after I read the reviews for it.

I don't need the mp3 player at this time, I can probably wait until mid-next year. I'm just getting opinions on what would be a good buy, since I can't trust an mp3 player that has an HD in it.

[rickysio]

MediaMonkey could work with iPods - it used to be able to up until I sold my iPod Touch away. I'm not sure now.

Hmm, convert a HDD based player to run off CF cards? There are 64GB CF's around, AFAIK.

[13x31]

Originally Posted by rickysio

MediaMonkey could work with iPods - it used to be able to up until I sold my iPod Touch away. I'm not sure now.

Hmm, convert a HDD based player to run off CF cards? There are 64GB CF's around, AFAIK.

Media Monkey works well with iPods, mainly if you have Media Monkey force the iPod way of storing the files.

Converting a HDD player to run from a CF card? Hmm... I'd need an adapter from the ribbon of the iPod to a CF. Most likely doable, but not very practical. Unfortunately, the 6th gen iPods are a b**** to take apart compared to the 5th gens. CF cards are up to 128GB BTW.

Well, it seems that my main (and unfortunate) option is to wait and see what pokes into the mp3 player market.

[rickysio]

Well, that's one possible way that you could do right now...

Or you could wait. The Galaxy S without the phone should launch soonish, after all.

[JK98]

I expect there to be some mp3 players that support SDXC cards available next summer. I wonder how they will be priced, and how expensive 64 GB SDXC cards will be then. I also wonder if 128 GB SDXC cards will be available then. Even if they are, they will probably be very expensive though.

[13x31]

I would imagine a slight drop (if any) in the SDXC cards. I've been keeping my eye on solid state drives for the past year, and the prices haven't really gone down all that much (maybe an average of 5-10 dollars?). It's hard to say though.

Yeah, that would be nice if something like that was out by next summer or so. Regardless, I have to wait, since I don't have any extra money for any kind of PMP at the moment (stupid insurance!).

[rickysio]

SD cards tend to drop in prices quite dramatically when a higher capacity card comes out, and becomes widely available...

[JK98]

"I actually want to have all of my music on hand. "

Most people at first feel this way, but after thinking about it for a while many realize that perhaps 85% of their listening is to their favorite 50% of their music, and perhaps more than 60% of their listening is to their favorite 25% of their songs. Of course this doesn't apply to everyone, and some people like to shuffle all their music all the time, but others may never shuffle their music, or only shuffle their most favorite artists. Very limited battery life also reduces the benefit of having very huge amounts of music on the player. If for example the player has 20 hours of battery life, 24 GB of storage, and the songs are at 192 kbps, the battery life only allows listening to less than 6% of the songs stored, and this number will be even less if some songs are listened to more than once per charge cycle. Of course one can carry external battery packs and do away with this limitation. One could also carry extra cards for a player with a card slot, but that also means waiting while the database refreshes.

I am content to have a player that holds at least 1/4 of my music, as I tend to listen to my favorite music much more than my least favorite music when all of it is available. Having 50% or more of it would be even more desirable for me, but not to the point of having to pay a large extra amount to do so. Limiting myself to 700 meg of music at a time would be quite annoying though.

[rickysio]

If I wanted to carry all my music around I'd probably need the 160GB iPod Classic.

But I'm already satisfied with the 8GB Clip+.

[JK98]

"SD cards tend to drop in prices quite dramatically when a higher capacity card comes out, and becomes widely available... "

Often it isn't that simple though. The new higher capacity card has to be an alternative to the existing card. The release of 64 GB SDXC cards shouldn't inflence the price of 32 GB SDHC cards very much, as most devices that take an SDHC card can't take an SDXC card.

In the case of micro SDHC cards, since the release of the 32 GB cards was much later than initially planned, 16 GB cards fell to a very low level(perhaps $45 or so) well before the 32 GB cards came out. Now that the 32 GB micro SDHC cards are out and the price dropped from $200 to $129, the 16 GB cards haven't declined that much further, perhaps just $5 or $10. I guess many people might go for double the capacity at triple the price, but become very reluctant to pay more than that. Above 4x the price for double the capacity seems totally crazy, but that was the case when the 32 GB micro SDHC cards first came out.

The real issue for pricing is supply and demand. There are many factors that go into this. It is not a simple matter.

[Marvin the Martian]

I wouldn't need all of my music on hand. My Clip+ with card gives me 22.73GB of capacity in total, and my Fuze gives me 22.99GB....and I know when I filled them up last that I had to make some hard decisions as to what to leave off them. I do think that I could carry around everything I'd want to carry around on a 32GB player though.....but I won't know for sure until I get one, I guess.