New Ipod Shuffle - any good?

godtabh

Is this any good?

Just want it for the gym? Cant find a review of it.

Would I be better off going for something else?

Steveo1983

i have the old shuffle and the lack of a screen is pretty annoying. i see komplett have the new shuffles for 99 euro for 1gig and it doesnt look like it has a screen. I would recomend the new Creative Zen V Plus, its 136 euro, 2 gigs and has a small screen caple of playing video.
http://komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=323588

godtabh

I wouldnt use the screen. All I would want is a few songs playing while on the thread mill or what ever.

maxitwist

you'd have to have a screen, what if you want to play a new song you have just discovered or something and it takes you an hour to get it beacuse you have to rely on faith and skip through 250 songs

twanda

This might be a good choice

http://ie.europe.creative.com/shop/product.asp?category=10&subcategory=14&product=1348&

It works on a folder structure, so you can skip through albums and songs if you want.

You're probably aware of this already but whatever you choose to buy, make sure it' based on flash memory - anything with a hard disk is not for use in the gym.

godtabh

maxitwist wrote:

you'd have to have a screen, what if you want to play a new song you have just discovered or something and it takes you an hour to get it beacuse you have to rely on faith and skip through 250 songs

Most of the stuff I'd be listening to are dance sets so its not really a problem. Besides I wouldnt mind to much skiping till I found one I was looking for.

twanda wrote:

This might be a good choice

http://ie.europe.creative.com/shop/p...&product=1348&

It works on a folder structure, so you can skip through albums and songs if you want.

You're probably aware of this already but whatever you choose to buy, make sure it' based on flash memory - anything with a hard disk is not for use in the gym

Looks ok.

I want something to replace my Ipod Mini which is on its last legs

TempestSabre

maxitwist wrote:

you'd have to have a screen, what if you want to play a new song you have just discovered or something and it takes you an hour to get it beacuse you have to rely on faith and skip through 250 songs

I had one and I loved it. Better sound quality than most other portables, and you don't need to take it out and look at it to use it, as you do with a lot of other devices inculding a nano or a full sized DAP. Generally I used to put maybe 10 albums on it in 192~320kps I could shuffle to a track on the album/folder I like. Then you could switch to non shuffle mode and move forward and back till you find the track. Really it was very easy and you could do it all without looking at it. Took at most 10~20 secs to get any track. Big problem with them is they break a lot. If you do a search on the web you find they just die for no reason. So if you get one factor that it may only last as long as the warranty.

Haven't heard how good the new one sounds. Its probably hander for use in a gym, but for me it was more useful as a USB stick, not needing a cable or a dock/cradle as the new one does. I've a Samsung 2GB unit with a screen and while its handier to copy stuff to and from it because its file tree, I find even though it has a screen I need to look at it to navigate and I didn't on the old shuffle. In fact I might get an old one again!

godtabh

Might go and look at the new ipods. I dixons have them.

I'm not bohtered looking at the screen. I can work the mini with out having to look at it and the schuffel shouldnt be that hard to work

TempestSabre

kearnsr wrote:

Might go and look at the new ipods. I dixons have them.

I'm not bohtered looking at the screen. I can work the mini with out having to look at it and the schuffel shouldnt be that hard to work

I'm curious. How do you navigate to a particular song, or album without looking at the screen?

godtabh

TempestSabre wrote:

I'm curious. How do you navigate to a particular song, or album without looking at the screen?

I usually play in all the tracks in one go. So then I know which album is playing and which is next etc and can easily skip 10 tracks between albums to kind what I'm looking for.

Its not really hard. THe ipod mini doesnt have 10k tracks on it so I usually know whats on it and where

TempestSabre

kearnsr wrote:

I usually play in all the tracks in one go. So then I know which album is playing and which is next etc and can easily skip 10 tracks between albums to kind what I'm looking for.

Its not really hard. THe ipod mini doesnt have 10k tracks on it so I usually know whats on it and where

So you use it just like a shuffle really. I've notice people with full size iPod's 30GB or so doing the same. They generally don't have that much on their iPods so its ok. Seems a waste to me. But its a free country you can do what you like.

conzy

Get this it has a radio too.......

leche solara

What about this one. It has a radio and 2GB

http://www.memory-configurator.com/products/description/2Gb_NEON_MP3_MP4_Player_Nano_Style_with_FM_Radio_White/index.html

TempestSabre

Does no one care if the SQ is any good or is all you are interested is the feature count/bloat on these things.

godtabh

TempestSabre wrote:

Does no one care if the SQ is any good or is all you are interested is the feature count/bloat on these things.

Whats wrong with the two above posted

TempestSabre

kearnsr wrote:

Whats wrong with the two above posted

No ones mentioned SQ just features. Creative are generally good, not that accurate but a fun sound. I've always liked them, even if the quality is a bit iffy. Lots of other players especially the no brand name makes sound terrible. Mind you people who think 64~128kps sounds good aren't going to appreciate the difference.

Brian017

How much do Komplett charge for delivery?

Idleater

Brian017 wrote:

How much do Komplett charge for delivery?

FAQ to be honest


Anyway,

I have an old shuffle and when I saw the new shuffle and I liked it. The sound quality on the old shuffle is one of the best around, and the lack of a screen is no issue. I don't have a need to look at a screen to tell me what I am listening to. 99.99% of the time you don't need to look at the screen anyway.

The shuffle is perfect for Gym/Sports/Driving because there are no functions to get "confused" with. Play/Pause, FF, FR, Vol up, Vol down. Thats it. What else do you need really?

If I am out for a run or whatever, the last thing I am going to do is stop and traverse a tree of albums because I want to hear a different song. Besides, that's how the battery life on the IPods is so good.

L.

TempestSabre

nereid wrote:

...Besides, that's how the battery life on the IPods is so good...

Explain?

godtabh

TempestSabre wrote:

Explain?

No screen uses less power than something that has a screen

TempestSabre

kearnsr wrote:

No screen uses less power than something that has a screen

So you didn't mean "ipods" but "Pod Shuffles"...

godtabh

TempestSabre wrote:

So you didn't mean "ipods" but "Pod Shuffles"...

Thats what I think he meant

maxitwist

kearnsr wrote:

Most of the stuff I'd be listening to are dance sets so its not really a problem. Besides I wouldnt mind to much skiping till I found one I was looking for.



Looks ok.

I want something to replace my Ipod Mini which is on its last legs

well I suppose since all dance songs sound the same you don't need a screen..............

godtabh

maxitwist wrote:

well I suppose since all dance songs sound the same you don't need a screen..............

I wouldnt go that far and thats not what I meant!

I listen to sets. Each sit could be 100mb long and I wouldnt split it up at all

TempestSabre

maxitwist wrote:

well I suppose since all dance songs sound the same you don't need a screen..............

Really? I suggest a Otologist

godtabh

Ended up getting the Nano with the Nike + Armband

Idleater

kearnsr wrote:

Ended up getting the Nano with the Nike + Armband

Sweet, nice piece of kit.

Anyway, just to explain (to TempestSabre) and others about the battery life on Apples being so good:

When ITunes uploads the songs to an iPod, not just the shuffle, it stores the exact positions of the songs in memory in a control file.

That is one of the reasons why you cant drag and drop songs onto an iPod and have it recognise them.

A general DB of all the tracks, albums, playlists, etc is also built up and stored in the control section.

The advantage of this, is that the seek time to any track is very quick, 100% reliable and uses very little power. This is espicially evident on the HD based iPods, because the spin time on the disc is minimised.

Therefore, the length of time that a battery lasts is increased, and is less affected by playing songs randomly throughout the entire library.

Now, of course, the actual battery life itself is no better (and some claim worse) in terms of play time, but of course, other players require much larger and heavier batteries to give the equivalent length of play time.


L.

TempestSabre

I never looked into it too closely, but I always thought that iPods never had especially good batttery life compared to other players., all things (bitrate etc) being equal. Maybe thats a misconception on my part.

Idleater

TempestSabre wrote:

Maybe thats a misconception on my part.

I reckon it is.

Creative zen vision m
Size: 30GB - 104 x 62 x 18.6mm
Weight: 30GB - 163g

IPod Video
Size and weight (30GB model)

* Height: 10.35 cm (4.1 inches)
* Width: 6.18 cm (2.4 inches)
* Depth: 1.1 cm (0.43 inches)
* Weight: 136 grams

Both claim 4 hours life video watching, and 14 playing music.

In reality, with normal use, the iPod will end up closer to that mark than the zen because of the internal file structure is more organised.

The tradeoff, is, that you don't have the plug and play, drag n drop functionality that you do with the zen.

L.

TempestSabre

I'll take your word for it, I've not read any detailed comparisions regarding battery life, based on how fast a file is found. From what I'd read in reviews the Vision M lasts considerably longer at least with video. With music the iPod is slightly better, which seems to confirm what you are saying. From what I understand, what makes a big difference is the cache on the machine, and the size of the files to be cached. I would suspect that makes more of a difference then how fast the file is found. I've also read that the iPod is more CPU intensive decoding video at least H.264, which hurts the battery life. Then I'm guessing using Shuffle, backlight and similar features has a bigger impact. But I'm only guessing.

Most portable players at least the creative, and Samsung ones I've used build an index file once the device is undocked and I assume this is similar to the iPod database stucture you are talking about. I use MediaMonkey and you can see the wierd iPod file structure. Seems to be no logic to the order in how things are written on the iPod. Again I've not looked into it much. You can use filetree on an iPod if you use a difference music manager to iTunes

I always thought apple does this database to work with the tags. Even the filetree players build a database file to display the tags, even if the device itself supports UMS filetree drag and drop. I didn't know this was a battery saving feature aswell.

nereid - do you have any links to more info on this?

maxitwist

kearnsr wrote:

I wouldnt go that far and thats not what I meant!

I listen to sets. Each sit could be 100mb long and I wouldnt split it up at all

I know, I'm just messin
one mans poison's is anothers dinner..............

cormie

Look at this beauty (the thing around the girls neck of course)



compared to the shuffle with dimensions of:

Size and weight

* Height: 27.3 mm (1.07 inches)
* Width: 41.2 mm (1.62 inches)
* Depth: 10.5 mm (0.41 inches) Including clip
* Weight: 15.5 g (0.55 oz)


this iRiver one is: 17.5g / 42 x 30 x 10.8mm

so only a tiny bit bigger, but it has a screen;)

Just maybe something else to consider.


link.

godtabh

cormie wrote:

Look at this beauty (the thing around the girls neck of course)



compared to the shuffle with dimensions of:

Size and weight

* Height: 27.3 mm (1.07 inches)
* Width: 41.2 mm (1.62 inches)
* Depth: 10.5 mm (0.41 inches) Including clip
* Weight: 15.5 g (0.55 oz)


this iRiver one is: 17.5g / 42 x 30 x 10.8mm

so only a tiny bit bigger, but it has a screen;)

Just maybe something else to consider.


link.

only 8 hours of battery life? I think that it makes this player a little piontless. What happened to all the good 12+ Hours from all the other players?

Would agree with this

cormie

yeah, I saw the 8 hour bit alright but I wasn't sure if that was definitely confirmed or not. That's not the best battery life at all for a flash player:(

TempestSabre

The Sonys seem to have great battery life.