Lowdown on MP3 players???

ballooba

Which brand is best???

Is the iPod all hype???

My mate wants to buy an iPod for his burrrd for christmas, they are like gold dust.

I mentioned that I had heard that iRivers are actually better than iPods. When he asked me why they were supposed to be better I didn't know.

So can anyone enlighten me, please.

SuprSi

I like the iPod - it looks great, though I think it's very hyped up and over-priced. I have a Creative Zen Xtra with 60Gb and it cost less than the 40Gb iPod. The new Creative Touch is a lovely little player (24 hour battery life, touch thing like the iPod),

http://www.nomadworld.com/products/zentouch/

One of my mates has an iRiver which looks great too.

There are so many around now it's difficult to decide, but personally I wouldn't spend my money on an iPod.

ballooba

Keep in mind that this girl is not technical minded.

The interface both on the player and for transferring music will have to be really user friendly like iTunes.

Mutant_Fruit

Creatives software couldn't be easier to use. I assume iTunes is just as easy.

The only bad point about the iRivers, and in my opinion its a major flaw, is the lack of "dynamic playlist" capabilities.

WHat this means is that i can't browse through my library, and play a radiohead album, and then add another album in to play as soon as the radiohead finishes. With the irivers you can only choose one album, and then manually select a new album after that plays through.

The only way around this is ti premake some playlists on your computer, but i think dynamic playlists are SO much better. Creatives do this by default. You can "queue" up as many albums/songs and stick it on random if you want.

I'm getting an iAudio M3L for christmas, and i believe that does dynamic playlists too, i'll let ye know on saturday if you want

ballooba

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

I'm getting an iAudio M3L for christmas, and i believe that does dynamic playlists too, i'll let ye know on saturday if you want

I'll you!!!

What about the Rio Karma??? over priced???

Mutant_Fruit

Rio karma was actually the top of my list of MP3 players i'd like until i found the iAudio. I'd recommend that aswell. Its main advantage over the iAudio is the ethernet port for connectivity, and it has RCA outputs, for maximum quality when connecting to a stereo system. Its also quite slick looking.

secret_squirrel

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

Creatives software couldn't be easier to use.

Disagree completely...mad confusing wizards....crazy 4 or 5 pane transfer screens. Complete nightmare.

What is good is the WMP10 integration and the 'sync to player option' Works like a charm with my Zen Micro. Also Notmad is much better than the standard creative transfer software.

Questions to ask yourself when buying an mp3 player are :

Do I have a lot of music in a digital format? What format. Ipods will only play thier own format (AAC?) and mp3 so they are useless if you have WMA or OGG formats - unless you want to lose quality by converting between the 2. iRivers tend to play anything that moves.

How much music do I want to store? My lifes collection...need a big hard drive. Just the best stuff? Consider a smaller 4-5Gb harddrive player like the Ipod Mini or Zen Micro. (The 20Gb Zen touch is the perfect combination of size and storage imho.)
3-5 Albums - solid state player 256-512mb.

Is she a radio listener? Ipods dont have radios - Some others do (some of the Zens for sure including the micro)

Is she a fashionista? Personally I think the iRiver 140 looks tacky - to much fake carbon fibre. The ipod mini looks very girly imho. The Zen micro kinda neutral. Bear in mind that the Micro and the mini come in all sorts of funky colours.

Does she have PC - if so if its a Mac she might as well give in and get the ipod.

Cabaal

Archos Gmini 400 - www.archos.com
Its now forsale on komplett for around 340 euro mark, excellent media player
battery usage could be better but it has excellent feartures

I got it the day it came out directly from archos.com

radiospan

I like Creative's Zens the best, for their audio quality and good value for storage space. (but the bundled software is terrible). But iPod's are cooler and way way sexier than my brick of a 60GB Zen. (although the new Zen Micros are nice)

secret_squirrel

Also meant to mention that the battery life on the Zen's seems to be cracking and actually comes very close to the quoted life.

Older ipods have had well documented battery problems.

Also most if not all of the creative zens have removeable batteries. afaik the ipods dont. The Zen micro is even coming with a spare one atm.

I can also vouch for the general all round usefulness of the Creative Helldesk/ Support people if something does go wrong - they were very good indeed.

Downside of Creative players is that they dont act like USB mass storage devices (For music anyway) which means that the PC always has to have their software installed to it.

Musashi

I bought a 1gig Sony solid state player,uses one AAA battery and will play MP3 and ATRAC, but the soundstage software crashs completely.Just as well I only wanrt to play MP3 on it!Battery life should be 70 hours and the thing is tiny,smaller than a match box.No inline remote on the headphones though.

ShevY

I bought a rio carbon for the gf for christmas, was gonna get an ipod mini, but sed **** it,
besides, the rio is just as small,
20 hours battery life compared to ipod minis 8,
5gig compared to 4gig,
and $50 cheaper!

just took advantage of xmas on ebay to sell my 4g ipod with only a small loss.

might get another rio if it turns out to be decent...

ShevY

haha, rio carbon arrived today,

i was admiring its size when i noticed something else covered in bubble wrap in the box, thinking it was some cd's/manual, i pulled it out. Another rio carbon!
oh **** i sed. theyve charged me for 2.
but no, invoice says one, bank account says one,
excellent...