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Buying an mp3 player
Carnivore
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Simple enough, reccomend me some.
I assume iPods are good but Im so into that kind of cheaper less popular brand purchasing kind of thing. You can get some absolute steals by not going with the market leader.
What about a Zune? I dunno if they are even in the UK yet. I havent seen one anywhere.
There are hundreds of places I could check info like this but Id prefer first hand user feedback, if anyone here has an mp3 whats the best to go for rather than what some mp3 magazine reviewer says.
The only consideration perhaps is my music collection. its huge, like 20,000 songs huge.
though i dont think ill ever need to dump it all on my mp3, but id like to have the luxury of not having to pick and choose a small selection everytime.
I assume iPods are good but Im so into that kind of cheaper less popular brand purchasing kind of thing. You can get some absolute steals by not going with the market leader.
What about a Zune? I dunno if they are even in the UK yet. I havent seen one anywhere.
There are hundreds of places I could check info like this but Id prefer first hand user feedback, if anyone here has an mp3 whats the best to go for rather than what some mp3 magazine reviewer says.
The only consideration perhaps is my music collection. its huge, like 20,000 songs huge.
though i dont think ill ever need to dump it all on my mp3, but id like to have the luxury of not having to pick and choose a small selection everytime.
Carnivore on
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I dunno about most people, but I've always been annoyed at the MP3 players with awesome battery life not giving the user the ability to use that high-powered lithium ion battery to power your external accessories. Like FM transmitters, amplified portable speakers, Bluetooth A2DP transmitter, etc. It's let to me being dissapointed with nearly every player on the market.
The Samsung K5 solves one of my gripes by actually building speakers into it. I'd call it "the perfect player" if it also had Blurtooth A2DP (after an internal speaker, why not?). Other than mobile phones with MP3 playback functionality, the only A2DP MP3 player I can find in The States is the Best Buy Insignia NS-DVBxG (replace "x" with the preferred capacity... 1, 2, or 4 GBs). Basically, I went looking for a good MP3 player with Janus DRM subscription support like my Portable Media Center but with flash memory and expandable memory which can utilize my two $25 Logitech BT headphones. Unfortunately, the best deal include the newer Logitech FreePulse headphones for $60 off (BestBuy.com only). I have a large GC at Best Buy, so I went for it (just shipped). Honestly, if the K5 had A2DP Bluetooth, I would have bought it instead.
I considered the Zune, but because MS has only said that they were looking into user requests such as wireless headphones, they lost my consideration. Watch them make some proprietary WiFi headphones to avoid including adapters for older models. :roll: It would make an awesome widescreen replacement for my Portable Media Center.
The NS-DVB4G doesn't look too bad. I've been burned by a bad DVD recorder and portable DVD player from Insignia (both broke the second time they were used), but this is made by a Korean manufacturer that wants to differentiate themselves... much like iRiver's position several years ago. It hasn't arrived yet, so I went to the store to look at the non-BT version they had on display. I'm only bugged by the exposed microSD card (AWESOME feature though) and the fugly scroll wheel (hasn't Apple had these patented since the first-gen iPos with its physically turning wheel?). Like another reviewer said, it's like two iPod nanos stacked on eachother. That sounds like the right heft for a unit with BT and a removeable battery (A++). I wish the interface was a little more "animated." It just snaps to different positions while you turn the wheel instead of animating to it. It kinda makes it hard to tell which direction to turn it to make your way through the interface, but I'm sure it's quickly learned. All in all, it's really similar to the nice SanDisk Sansa players that have been showing up with scroll wheels.
The other player I was HEAVILY considering was the new Sansa Express with MicroSD (~$60!). It the cable-less "stick-style" like the older iPod Shuffles except that it has a color OLED. Charges with USB, has decent and expandable capacity, supports Janus subscriptions, what's not to like? Well, stupid engineers put the lanyard holes on the cap like all the otehr retarded engineers (wouldn't you rather lose THE CAP than THE PLAYER?!). I believe patent issues keep them from making retracting cap-less connectors, but that would be ideal. I passed i up because I thought to myself: "It'd be perfect if it just had A2DP" and then I proceeded to find the only available player with A2DP. I support technologies I like (subscription music, A2DP, expandability, etc). No A2DP = Another lost sale.
Even after getting two bad dead-on-arrival Samsung T7-Z players and having the refurb lost at Samsung for three months, I once recommended the follow-up Samsung T7-J[X/Z] series back when they were the only super-tiny full-color flash MP3 players with USB charge support from a name-brand. Indeed, I bought one of each for my brother (his 512MB one was stolen and I sprang for the 1G one). It was too small for a built in full-size USB connector, but at least it had a standard mini-USB port. The Samsung "U1" was a nice stick-based player with a built in retracting port. I guess it bugged a patent holder, because the U2 added the subscription support that I demanded while putting in one of those annoying caps.
I own two Samsung YH-999 20GB Portable Media Center machines for my TV shows, but I use them primarily as MP3 players. Battery life is pretty bad if you don't use the in-line remote (the screen backlight activates otherwise). These predate the iPod video, but they were also some of the first large subscription music players. Video performance is terrible though as it chokes with any HDD operation (FF, RW? Forget it. Expect 20 seconds before hiccup-free video continues). I was really impressed with video performance in the curret crop which I can only attribute to better dedicated chips inside. I looks at the included videos on the Insignia player and I was impressed.
That the state of the MP3 player market according to me. I keep a pretty narrow and biased focus (anything but iPod, must have kick-ass featureset).
Sure, it doesn't have the same style as the iPod nano, but it's a hell of a lot cooler in my book (and WAY more functional).
http://www.woot.com/Blog/BlogEntry.aspx?BlogEntryId=2359
Sony had announced an A2DP adapter and a ton of A2DP accessories.