I fear my trusty(ish) portable music player has given out, right as I’m trying to lose those five pounds for a gala in three weeks. Now I’m looking for something to keep me company while I jog.
I’d like something:
small with skip-protection, that I can use while jogging
with a good shuffle function (one that’s truly random, and doesn’t just kick in the same “shuffled” list every time)
under $50. Preferably under $40, said the college student as she noshed her ramen.
I’m looking for an mp3 player as well, so I can’t really recommend a good one, but I can warn you off one: RCA Lyra, to be precise. I’ve been having problems with the computer reading the files, and recently, I can’t even use the USB connection: when I plug the player into my PC, it simply plays songs without switching over to the “USB Connected” screen. Ugh.
You can look on ebay to see generally what MP3 players are going for.
pricegrabber and epinions are also good for gauging what a product should cost.
IMHO, your $40-50 budget is prohibitively low and will limit you to 128MB- maybe 256 max. This is really not enough tracks for any shuffle program to work well. Then again, some people might like the same 40 songs over and over every day, How do I know?
There are basically two kinds of new MP3 players:
Gumpack (flash) devices Modern ones go for $75-$150 and have 512MB-1GB of storage.
HD (Rotating media) devices $200-500 with multi-gig storage capacity. iPods & similar devices are outside your price range.
I’d say if you can find a 256MB device in your price range that works for you, go for it. Remember that you’re buying the device and the software to make it work. Crappy players often come with crappy software. The best players work with native files and don’t require much manual juggling of tracks.
Now I’m looking for something to keep me company while I jog.