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The price of MP3 players has shot down, and as online retailer Play.com has a sale on they're even cheaper than normal. For those who don't know; these are tiny little memory stick players which store music and play it out through earphones.
Of course these ultra-cheap machines don't have lots of whizzy options, but they do the job plus have a built in USB connector so you can plug them into your computer, with ease, to transfer music and even store documents.
Current Cheapest Deals
Always double check the price - the heavy demand from the weekly e-mail means retailers sometimes change them.
Memory size 512Mb (roughly enough for 180 songs)
Online. The Play.com Lite 512Mb V3 is available in black and pink for £7.99 all in (sale price as it was £35, though that was expensive for it).
In store. Argos is selling an Acoustic Solutions player for £8.94, which you can reserve and collect in store, or get delivered but then you pay an extra £2.95 for delivery. Having said that, it has the benefit of being splashproof.
Memory size 1Gb (roughly enough for 320 songs)
Online. The Play.com 1Gb Lite V3 is currently available for £14.99 delivered, although Play has told me the price will drop £2 on Weds 25 July, so if you want to buy one, wait until then. Again this is the sale price as it was originally £40, though that's a hefty fee for a player like this.
Amazon is selling an Odys W-X700133 for £15.99, which although comes without a battery, has a built-in FM radio plus can be used as a dictaphone. As it's over £15, the delivery is free.
In store. Currys is selling a Matsui MAT110MR for £14.99, which is available online, although you'd pay an extra £2.99 for delivery so head in store if you're after one of these. A battery isn't included.
What do all these numbers mean?
512Mb and 1Gb describe the capacity of an MP3 player, that is, how much data it's able to store. Around 320 songs can be saved on 1Gb and around 180 on a 512Mb (although these figures depend entirely on the compression method of the music files when transferring to your player, but we won't get too technical!).
The biggest players around will store 120Gb but cost in excess of £200; and do you actually have 30,000 songs to fill it with, that you'd want to listen to?
If you've seen a similar or better deal please click reply and post below to help other MoneySavers
Martin
Martin Lewis, Money Saving Expert.
Please note, answers don't constitute financial advice, it is based on generalised journalistic research. Always ensure any decision is made with regards to your own individual circumstance.
Be careful with the Matsui MP3 players. I bought a cheap 2Gb one from Currys last year. The software on it only let you play your songs in alphabetical order of the song title, even if they were in seperate folders. There was a forum running at the time with loads of people having the same trouble and having to take them back. Some people were trying to update the software, which made the players un-useable. I now only use mine as a USB memory stick (which you could buy cheaper anyway).
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The biggest players around will store 120Gb but cost in excess of £200; and do you actually have 30,000 songs to fill it with, that you'd want to listen to?
The bigger players also have the ability to store photo's and video's etc which soon eat up your memory.
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Actually, you should be able to store photos and videos on any of them; you just wont get too much video on a 1GB stick.
The key point is, players of that size will probably have the ability to play the videos on an integral LCD screen (MP4 players).
(Sorry for the pedantry)
Is completely correct. If you just want to store photos and videos, get a usb data / memory stick rather than a mp3 player. If you want to play them on the move, you need a mp3 / mp4 player capable of playing them. My advice would be always try out a video player in a store like Dixons before purchasing (online) so you can tell what the quality will be like depending on what you want to watch. It is hard to watch a full screen movie on a 1.5 or 2 inch screen.
The biggest players around will store 120Gb but cost in excess of £200; and do you actually have 30,000 songs to fill it with, that you'd want to listen to?
No but I have got around 8gb of songs on a USB memory stick sat in my car radio which I want to put on an MP3 player, anyone know of any cheap deals for a player around that size? I've looked on Kelkoo and shopping.com just wondered if they could be beaten with offers like those above
Da Moron
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I got a couple of 2Gb MP3 players from Aldi at £29.99 each. They have a rechargeable battery and lots of extras. I've been very pleased with it. I also saw they had an MP4 player for the same price but I haven't tried that out.
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Yes, i have seen that Aldi has MP4 player for £27.99. Can any one tell me what they are and what they do, please. No very good even at MP3's but my son will probably love it??!! Thanks
Yes, i have seen that Aldi has MP4 player for £27.99. Can any one tell me what they are and what they do, please. No very good even at MP3's but my son will probably love it??!! Thanks
MP4 is a video format so MP4 players can view video, similar to the way mobile phones can. All MP4 players are also MP3 music players.
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...and of course you can juice up any new (or old) player with free mp3 music: Through http://www.!!!!!!!!!!!!!! you can find a no-risk free trial that can be cancelled within 2 weeks....
After getting sticky cancellation situations (or money taken where not due) with a couple of supposedly respectable companies, I now refuse to enter my credit card number into the web page of any co offering a free starter subscription while claiming they will not take any money immediately. The hassle is just not worth it.
Debt free now - but renting half of my house from the building society . Discuss.
I like audio books and found that the 'standard' mp3 players will play them, but the bookmarking is poor and files tend to be a bit too big. I switched to a iPod and now get books from Audible.co.uk (who with a subscription supply a free Shuffle). My subscription is £7 a month and I buy books with the credit that would normally cost £30-£50...and 15 hours of 'reading' in about 20mb with automatic bookmarking and so on. I'm going to upgrade to a big iPod so I can fill it with songs, books and videos.
There are also lots more accessories for iPods - waterproof it, beach-listening, sprucing it up etc. I know some people won't use iPods for similar reasons to 'hating' McDonalds, (the whole 'corporate is bad' thing) but if it does what you want....
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Shopping Tips Don't spend five pounds to dry clean a shirt. Donate it to the charity shop instead. They'll clean it and put it on a hanger. Next morning buy it back for two pounds.
I bought one of these MP3 players for £12.99 plus delivery about a year ago - its sound quality through the supplied earphones is surprisingly good - but it's now cheaper and comes with a 512MB SD card!:
Yes I have the same, catch is that using rechargeables you get about 3 hours service. Otherwise a handy device for listening to podcasts downloaded using that free program Juice. The next frontier is an mp3 player that is cheap and offers convenient battery life - or even one that can remember where it was in your play list when you last switched it off.
Debt free now - but renting half of my house from the building society . Discuss.
Music is my career, my whole life and what I think about 24/7 - you could say I ever do is make sure sound quality and my appreciation and enjoyment of the music is the best it can be.
Recently my girlfriend bought a really cheap 18 quid 2 gb mp3 player and she came bounding up to me super pleased that she got something that cost me £200 (ie an ipod) for £18.
Well after 1 second of hearing the quality difference, I'm damn pleased I spent the £200.
I've drawn a big conclusion from this. Sometimes we're all so bothered about getting a so called 'bargain', or saving money (and I've been a big, big fan of this site BTW for about a year now and it's saving me sooooooo much money) that we don't actually realise that there's certain things we really can't save money on and have to pay the asking price.
For me, music is one of those things. If you love music and you really do want to hear things crisp, clear and precise, then these cheap deals are exactly that - cheap. But for me, music is alot more than cheap sound and a good deal.
If you're a music lover and expecting a 'deal' from a £20 mp3 player make sure you do your research.
Anybody found / recomend an MP3 player with a FM radio built in?
The "Tevion 5363" 2Gb MP4 (i.e. MP3) player from Aldi @ £28 has an FM radio built in. There are two bands: "standard" FM, for here in the West, and "Japanese", for the lower-frequency signals used over there.
This was on offer a couple of weeks ago, but local stores may still have some stock. Here in <where-I-live>, the players are kept under the tills -- one has to ask to get them, since they're so shopliftable.
The player is usable, but the manual's garbage, and completely omits instructions on the various download options available (e.g. Windows Media Player synching version direct USB-filesystem transfer).
Music is my career, my whole life and what I think about 24/7 - you could say I ever do is make sure sound quality and my appreciation and enjoyment of the music is the best it can be.
...and yet you bought an ipod...?
Do agree, though, that the cheaper players (as Martin hints in the OP) aren't going to have the same sound quality as the more expensive ones.
The Zen Stone, then, should probably be mentioned in this thread somewhere...You can get the 1gb version for around £25 in a bunch of places, so it won't break the bank, but it's a decent brand and should sound noticably better than most of the *really* cheap players...
yep. I would not touch the cheap ones. I love my music too much to do that. I recently bought the Cowon D2 4GB and I am thrilled to bits with it. I have saved money using MSE and spent it on a good mp3 player...a pretty good reward for myself. After all what good is it to save money and not use it for something you really like to do ?
I wonder what the use is for 512MB and 1GB players these days. My previous player was 2GB and I could barely fit my music in it.
Pls be nice to all MoneySavers. There's no such thing as a stupid question, and even if you disagree courtesy helps. Take care over copyright. Use excerpts and links rather than copying long text. This site asserts copyright on all comments posted on the board.
Pls be nice to all MoneySavers. There's no such thing as a stupid question, and even if you disagree courtesy helps.
Cheapest 512Mb & 1Gb MP3 Players
Matsui mp3 player
. Discuss.
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