I’ve been pondering getting an mp3 player, and have done some research into price vs. capacity, battery life, size, etc. It seems that in almost every case the iPod is more expensive.
Price and capacity is number one on my list. I want something in the 20 to 40 GB range for storage, small (but not necessarily tiny), good battery life, and possible accessories. The best I’ve found is the Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra. I can get a 40 GB player for $249. A 20 GB iPod is $299.
So, I ask: what is the big deal with iPods?
What kind of mp3 players do you guys have or recommend?
They are well designed and of high quality, something best understood by actually trying one. The design and quality do not come cheaply, only you can decide if it is worth the price to you.
I just wanted to add that the new iPods are 30 GB for $299, and they play video too. I think you can probably get an older model 20 GB for under $200 now. In any case, iPods consistently win any kind of show down with other MP3 players. For whatever reason, they make the majority of people happy since the majority of people don’t want or need lots of different options in terms of how their music is encoded, or whether it can do this or that. If you want any of the more advanced features not found on an iPod, then get something else.
Gangster Octopus and UncleRojelio hit two points: design and marketing. iPod wins. iPod has a friendly, easy-to-use interface. iPod works seemlessly with iTunes, which many regard as the best online music store. iPod also has the most specially-designed third party accessories, if you might be in the market for any of those.
This isn’t to knock Creative or other .mp3-player manufacturers. Creative makes a fine product (usually). Before I recently switched to an iPod Nano (hey, size matters!), I had no dissatisfaction with MSN Music store. If capacity-to-price ratio is your key decision point, then iPod may not be for you. Nothing wrong with that.
They are made of high-quality materials, so they don’t feel or look like a crappy consumer-grade cheap-plastic-ridden piece-of-shit. The interface is simple and easy to use (dare I say intuitive?), but powerful.
And, iTunes (the software you use to load MP3’s on the iPod) is excellent. Most software for competitor’s products seems to have been written by drunken chimpanzees. The Music Store also has an excellent selection.
User-friendly gentle-learning-curve idiot-proof software (both on the iPod itself and on the computer for transferring files).* Your grandmother can pick one up and know how to do what she needs inside of five minutes.
Peripherals and accessories. Because they have become so ubiquitous as THE MP3 player, there are a lot of iPod specific accessories out there. Want a car-mounted FM transmitter that will also charge your player’s battery? iPods have about a dozen, other brands virtually none. Special cases for various usage purposes? Third party iPod cases aplenty, but relatively little elsewhere.
What would I recommend? It depends on how you plan to use the player. If it will always be headphones as you walk/exercise/commute on the train, go with the Zen Xtra. I have a 20GB Zen (curse Creative because they came out with the Xtra line about two months after I bought my player), and they are seriously underrated players. If you’re going to be heavy into accessories (and I know you mentioned wanting at least the possibility), then sadly iPods are pretty nearly the only game in town.
*That being said, I find that I have a bitch of a time using an iPod after I’ve spent two and a half years getting used to, and heavily using my Zen.
Adding a comment I should have put in my first response, especially now that I’ve seen a number of people bring up purchasing music via iTMS.
If you have a large CD (or mp3) collection already, and I’m guessing that you do if you’re looking for a high-capacity player, there’s probably little reason to factor in iTMS as a benefit of getting an iPod.
Oh, and there is a simple enough means to get any player to recognize music purchased on iTMS if you so decide that the music store is something you’re interested in, which Apple themselves has noted and allowed: Burn your purchases to a CD (good idea anyway since iTMS doesn’t give a darn if your hard drive crashes and all the music you bought goes up in a whif of smoke), then rip them back to your compressed file type of choice. In other words, iPods simply remove a step from the equation, but any player can play songs bought on iTMS.
I was bouncing between the iPod and the Creative Zen when I ended up settling on the iPod, even though it was somewhat more expensive. The biggest thing with me was the interface - when driving down the highway at 70 mph, I wanted an interface that was easy, predictable, and would minimize the amount of distraction of changing from one song to another.
To me, the creative controls were a little cumbersome, and the touch strip was way too sensitive (even when sensitivity was turned down). True, I probably would have gotten used to it, but the operative word there is ‘probably’. I knew for a fact that I liked the ipod interface and the click wheel. To me, I was content spending a little more $$ to get something I knew I would like and use in the future, rather then get something that was slightly cheaper, where there was a higher chance that it wouldn’t get used as much because of the UI.
In the end, it was either spend $300 for the product I knew I would like, or spend $250 for a product that I would probably like, but not nearly as certain.
I’ve used both the iPod and the Zen Xtra and I much prefer the Zen, for more reasons than price. For one thing, the buttons on the iPod are too sensitive, just a brush will make you change songs. I don’t like that. (I’ve heard that the Zen Touch is also hypersensitive, but I have the one that just has buttons.) It is heavier and more substantial-looking than the iPod; some people say weight is a negative factor but I like a player with a bit of heft. The iPod just looks so breakable, but I’ve put like, heavy books on top of my player (not a good thing to do, I know) and had no problems with it. And since I don’t download music, just rip it from CDs, I have no use for the iTunes store. And also, iPods are the hot new item to steal nowadays (just ask Otto). I’ve never had anyone pilfer my Zen, even though I leave it out on my desk all the time. That may be due to the weight/size (in its case, it is almost twice the size of an iPod, not super-easy to conceal in a pocket), or just because I work in a good place, but still it’s something to consider. And another consideration (which is just coming up for me now since my battery is nearing the end of its life) is that replacement batteries for the Zen cost $40 and you can replace it yourself, whereas iPod battery replacement costs $99 AND you have to mail it back to them to replace, depriving yourself of the iPod for a few weeks and also risking loss or damage in the mail.
I think that in a lot (not all, but a lot) of cases people just get iPods because it’s what their friends have, and also because there’s all those commercials. They DO look slicker and more aesthetic, but I found the Zen to be much more user-friendly for what I use it for. My advice is to go to a store and try them out yourself. But yeah, sometimes all popularity means is that a lot of people bought your product, not that it’s better, and I think that’s the case with the iPod.
I love my iPod. It looks cool, works great, I love iTunes. Tons of accessories (I can still find tons of stuff for my old school one that doesn’t have the click wheel). Don’t buy much from the iTunes store seeing that a good amount of music I enjoy is not sold on it, but I have used it before and it’s nice.
And iPods have that nifty little ‘lock’ switch on the top to prevent changing songs accidentally. Mine is always on unless I am looking through songs and it’s never came ‘unlocked’ by accident before. And it fits easily in my pocket, even with my iSkin cover (rubbery cover - it will basically bounce if I drop it from low height now, not just clatter on the floor).
I have a Creative Zen Touch, that is 40 gigs and has the Lock feature as well, I have had mine for about 4 weeks now and really like it. For me I didn’t want an apple product because I didn’t want to be locked into their service and their format. I also have several computers, desktop at home, laptop, and desktop at work and want to be able to manage the mp3 player from all three and to my knowledge you can’t do that with an Apple product with out wipping it clean each time, something I don’t want to do. I am a little erked that there are fewer aftermarket or third party accesories available but most that stuff is BS anyway and not really needed, an Fm Transmitter for my car works just as well for my new MP3 player as it did for my old.
Most[sup]1[/sup] people won’t notice the difference between the quality of music bought in a lossy format from iTunes, MSN or whatever other source. However, if you expand that lossy format by burning it to CD, then recompress it in another format, many more people will begin to notice the degradation in sound.
[sup]1[/sup]You (generic) notice the difference? Great. Here’s a pat on the back. I stand by my statement - most won’t notice. No need to post about how great your ears are.
To be fair, you can replace your iPod battery on your own. It’s a little bit of a pain, but it’s no more than a fifteen minute affair and shouldn’t cost more than $30.00. You’ll void your warrenty, but considering that the warrenty doesn’t include dead batterys, failed hard drives, or cracked screens, it’s not really that big of a problem.
I’ve said it before. I hate my iPod. I think 99% of people buy them as a fashion statement or just because it is “sexy.” Well, it’s sexy until you try to use it. Then you discover dumb ways the iPod is gimped. Using it with iTunes is great, until you actually want to DO something with it- like use it on different computers or transfer your music (say, to another iPod product) without having space to have it on your computer. Or if it crashes while your using it on an airplane or something. Does “press the pause and the stop button for ten seconds” sound “intuitive”? Because thats the secret combination you need to know if you want to do a hard reset- a regular old hard reset button would have been inelegent, you know? So instead your stuck in the air with a crashed iPod (wait, arn’t they not supposed to crash?) until you get home and get the manual. Apple has gimped their product due to pressure by the music lobby and in the name of “good design”.
I don’t disagree. Of course sliding back and forth will reduce quality; it’s not been my experience that going from compressed to uncompressed back to compressed is too awful a loss in quality. Maybe noticeable a touch, but certainly no worse than a decently tuned FM station.
Of course, I just buy cheap CDs from used music stores, so I get lossless quality at the start, and only one compression.
Another Zen owner here. I got mine for $208 from Amazon earlier this year. There was an issue with the player locking up, but a firmware upgrade fixed that. It’s slightly larger than an iPod, but I like the heft. It seems to be better made than the iPod (which felt too flimsy and delicate for me) and it looks better, IMHO (I like brushed metal over cheap-looking plastic). I can also change the battery without having to crack the case.