I think my MP3 player is on its last legs. I’ve had it for a “whole” 3 years and so I reckon it’s pretty much reached the end of its life span, and the sale season is fast approaching so now is probably a good time to get a new one.
I’ve only ever had to date non-Apple products, mainly products by Creative. I’m not prejudiced against ipods, it’s that iTunes doesn’t recognise large sections of my music library meaning I’d lose a lot of albums if I wanted to convert to an Apple product (unless there’s a well-known reason for that people can suggest a work around for). That and I have a PC anyway.
So, I need an MP3 player that isn’t Apple based, and it needs to be at least 30G to fit my library on. Any suggestions? Whenever I try and look at specialist sites their range of non-Apple stuff is never that impressive, and I would really value some second opinions. Not against getting another Creative product necessarily, but if anyone knows a particular brand or product they rate highly then let me know as I find Creative a bit so-so. Ta!
The only other one I am aware of is the Zune.
I’ve got the 8 Gb version and it works just fine. I’ve got around 2000 songs on it that I’ve accumulated over the years. Some are downloads, some are CD rips and I’m pretty sure that they are in several different formats. The Zune plays them all just fine.
I did flash mine with new firmware called RockBox. It gives you more options to interact with your library than the stock firmware. I dont’ know what (if any) similarities there are between the 32 Gb and 8 Gb Zune, but I’m happy with mine.
Creative labs makes nice mp3 players at a great price.
Creative ZEN Mozaic EZ100 MP3 Player 8GB is $50. I bought two and love them. No special software or drivers needed. My Win notebook sees it as a standard 8GB thumbdrive. I copy my music into the folders and that’s it. Charges through usb and I also bought a stand alone charger that was optional.
I used to love Creative and, in fact, their hardware still is great, but their software is terrible. I had bought a 64GB Zen about a year and a half ago that worked great (great battery life and awesome sound quality), except they didn’t upgrade their firmware from the 32GB version, so it had a silly hardcap of 8000 tracks. Of course, the whole reason I bought the 64GB version was because I have more than 8000 tracks so the library was larger than 32GB anyway. When I ask if they would update their firmware, their solution was to re-rip my entire library at a higher bit-rate so that the 8000 tracks will use up all 64GB… which still doesn’t solve me getting more than 8000 tracks on it.
Because of my frustration with that, when it was stolen, I was more indifferent than I really should have been. Since it’s been a while, they might have actually updated their firmware, otherwise you’re probably stuck with a Zune. Another option might be a smartphone, since you can get a free app like WinAmp and just stick in a 32GB microSD on top of the internal storage.
I have a Creative Zen something or other. I think it’s 40GB, but I can’t remember. I’m at work or I’d look at it. It’s a few years old, though. I’m sure there is a better, newer one now.
I haven’t used it recently because I lost the cable for it. I really need to go on ebay or something and buy a new cable.
Here is what I have that has worked out great for the past 1.5 yrs. I got an iPod video (v5.5) and put on Rockbox as a replacement OS (http://www.rockbox.org).
I now have 80 gigs of space, can play pretty much whatever I want for music on it and I can use all the 3rd party devices that it can plug into. The best part is NO iTUNES REQUIRED to put my music on the device.
Total investment for this was about $100 for the used ipod video.
I went home to look at my mp3 player so I could report back, and it isn’t in the spot that it’s been sitting in for literally at least a year. I looked around for it and couldn’t find it. It will resurface one of these days, but right now I have no idea where it is. Kind of bugs me. Sorry about that–I really liked it, whatever it was. Almost positive it was Creative Zen though. You could put videos and music on it.
I’ve recently changed from an 8GB Creative ZenV+ (I think) to an 8GB Sansa Clip+ with 32GB micro SD installed and am very happy. The interface is simple, files just drag and drop on, it sounds great and it’s tiny and conveniently clippable. My only reservation only caveat is that the battery life is OK is not amazing.
anythingbutipod.com have some helpful reviews and data about various players.
I’ve got a Sansa Fuze that I really like. The ability to drag and drop music onto a microSD card was a big selling point for me and a feature I use a lot.
It’s starting to really bother me that I can’t find that stupid thing. It was on the end table for a YEAR! Where did it go? Sorry to hijack, I won’t say anything else about it. It’s just that this thread was going to be my motivation to finally go buy another cable for it and start using it and I was kind of excited about it. Damnit.
I have loved all my Creative MP3 players. I have washed more than one of the non-hard drive ones when they got left in a pocket. I set them on a shelf for a few days to dry out and they still work. Between my son and myself we still have 5 of them of different generations/models. The oldest is my Zen Micro, which is a lot more than 3 years old.
We’ve had other MP3 players - including a couple of iPods, but the Creative ones have worked better, longer for us.
Tell me about it. I have a Creative Zen Nomad with a 40 gb hard drive from 2003, and it’s even on the original battery. It saw pretty heavy use until I bought my iPhone, but still plays like a champ. And when I do need a new battery, they’re ridiculously easy to change, unlike the iPhone.
Also, the software lets you copy songs directly to and from Windows Explorer. You don’t need to build a library like in iTunes.