MP3 player recommendations

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m looking to spend about $250 for an mp3 player for my birthday present for myself next month. I definitely want 80Gigs - to transfer all of my CD’s (a few hundred of them) and to make room for (what I hope will be) an ever-expanding library of music.

My main concerns are:

  1. Easy user interface.
  2. The ability to store songs in categories (Jazz, Swing, 80’s, etc.).
  3. The ability to develop playlists of songs (from multiple categories, if possible).
  4. Ease of buying more music over the net from a variety of sources (if available).
  5. Loud ear buds.
  6. If possible at this price range, compatibility with a car stereo, a home docking station, etc.

Looking around, I see an 80GB iPod in my price range, as well as an 80GB Zune.

Does either one offer an advantage over the other, in terms of my needs? The Zune feature that allows sharing of songs among multiple users isn’t something that interests me at all, so don’t factor that into your considerations. Is there perhaps another brand offered by another retailer that might interest me?

Thanks!

2

I have the 80 gig iPod. I have just about 3500 songs, mostly recorded in 192 kbps, which takes up about 17 gigs. So, room for about 14,000 songs recorded in a higher than average quality mp3 format. I am very happy with the ease of use and the ease of creating playlists, and the ease and price of getting more music from the iTunes store.

I was less than happy about the qulity of earbuds, but I’ve found it a universal that the original equipment earbuds/phones suck with everything. You can get a very good quality pair for about $40.

I looked at the Zune, and went for the iPod mostly just because there was such a huge market of related products for it.

I see one this about the Zune that appeals to me – if you care about video or pics. I see it offers a component output video, which means potentially higher resolution images than my iPod will put out.