Which portable music player to go for...?

Discogod

Hi All,

I've posted this same message on AVforums but am widening it to this community as you guys are always great at helping others!

This is a rather long post but it lists all my requirements - i'm looking to buy my first DMP (digital Music Player) & want to make the right choice. I'd appreciate anybody who has the knowledge to chip in with suggestions & what you know.

the whole MP3 player thing seems a minefield, so many manufacturers, so many specs, so many choices, too many! So i need some help please narrowing it down please.

I want to get a DMP as i'm going on holiday in May to Malaysia, loooooong flight & hopefully many hours on a beach (amongst other things). Back home i'll probably not use it a great deal, maybe 4 or 5 times a month if i venture anywhere on my own.... say shopping or something.

I own a PC, I've never bought an MP3 & dont really plan to. I like to buy CD's & i'll happily burn these in order to get them onto the DMP

Battery - 10 hours would be the minimum really & i want to be able to charge from a normal plug (USB is a bonus)

Storage - Not sure on what size, definitly 2GB or over though. I shan't be needing all my music collection so 20GB max... quite a range really, this area i'm quite open to ideas right now. Basically i can see myself putting on about 40 albums as soon as i get it... with more whenever i buy new music (which isn't often to be honest), but i do love downloading live music but it's only for a couple of bands i'm into! So... room to store 50 albums now & more in future whenever i buy more. I won't be needing to expand the storage in future though - i think! (i suspect the battery or machine will die before that time comes!)

physical size / weight... an ipod to me is tiny, agreat size... smaller isn't needed but is a bonus. I just want something i can fit in my pocket really.

file format - i'm open to what file formats to use - but like i said i shan't be buying mp3's from the web, my music will be from CD's & live bootleg downloads. I'm happy to convert to whatever file type needed.

I am 20% deaf.... sound quality is important to me & i love music a great deal. The sound quality should be pretty good - there does come a point where i can't tell the difference between one sound quality & another, it's not the be all & end all.

I'll only use this to play music... pictures, videos do not interest me

software - i've read online how some software provided is basically rather feeble. I'm not wanting to sync the player with my entire collection on my PC - but rather i want to pick & choose the albums to put on the DMP... i guess drag & drop is best for me for this but i dont know. I also dont want to have to wait 3 hours to put add just one more album or song of my choice to the player.

I've read the sony models are the only ones to remove gaps between mp3's... whilst this is a very useful feature, especially with live music, it's not a killer blow to me.

the player itself should be able to play by artist, album, random & my own playlists.

price - well, as i dont expect to be using this much in day to day life, i dont want to be spending a ton of money on it. Value is important to me, i'm always trying to shop around to get the best deal for myself. I started looking for a player a couple of days back with an open figure of about £80, but now realise this is pretty much unrealistic to what i want the player to have. I like the idea of getting a refurb model - just as long as they're realiable & aren't too scratched up already. This should be able to get me a price under £100 i hope.

As my holiday is in May, i've got a couple of months to buy, so time to think on this!

Many thanks to all who can help, it's really appreciated

Sir_Bargains-A-Lot

You sound pretty unfussy...which is a great help...and your budget is reasonable too - any players over 1Gb are going to start needing some significant outlay.

I would say a Creative Zen Micro would fit the bill perfectly. The battery life is great, it's a small but pretty unit, the sound quality is great, it handles most audio filetypes, and the sound quality is good.

Most of the ones on retails sites will be the newer (colour screen) models which are up to 8GB. These can be found for as little as £99.99 if you shop around. However, you could just as easily go for one of the older generation models (not colour screen, and either 4GB or 6GB) and I'm sure it would actually weight in around (or under) the £80 mark. Might take a fair bit of looking for an older one though - eBay would probably be a good place to go for one...

wolfman

Stick with the mp3 format. It's still the most flexible and widely used, and offers great sound quality.

For converting your music, use an app like Cdex. It's fairly simple to use, and will rip your tracks from cd to mp3 via the best possible codec (for accurate sound quality), and also tag/organise it.

The Zen Micro (as mentioned) is a good buy.

If you want the best control system, and a decent size the iPod Nano is unbeatable. The 2gb version is slightly over your budget. Can be bought for £110 from HMV (with the £20 voucher code).

An older iPod Mini might also be worth considering if you can find one for a decent price.

SiMaster

hey,

can I recommend an archos Gmini400 - I went through about two months of research before I got one - I still believe it's best on the market.

Good Points:

Plays movies with easy conversion, can store up to 80hours movies. Can plug Gmini directly into your TV to watch movies or play games on it. Colour Screen. Is a portable hard drive - so is plug and play no software needed. 20 Gb hard drive. Photo viewing software included. Charges from a wall socket (hand for travelling without computer). Small as an Ipod Aluminium Case Ability to play games. Has a CF card adapter on the side - plug up to 2Gb CF cards straight into it - handy for photography. built in microphone ability to upgrade to have a radio plays Mp3 and WAV

This is the most important thing and what swung me to buy one........ the software has been hacked. This means a lot of freelance developers have written some amazing software for it.

At the moment I got these free programmes on mine

Game Gear emulator with 600 games Sega Master system Emulator with 1000 games Gameboy emulator with games Gameboy advance emulator with games Doom - yes the original doom plays on it. Suduku generator a book viewer i.e. I can download a book onto it and read on train stopwatch

there seems to be new programmes coming out everyday. have a look at https://www.gmini400.com this is the bible for Gmini - the forums have all the links to new software, modification and amazing support for problems.

there is only one slight drawback - battery life but there is a fix for it.
music = 10 hrs
video = 5 hrs

but like most Gmini owner I’ve stuck in a £10 Ipod battery it gives:
music 20hrs
video 10hrs

better than most on the market.

I got mine for £160 pound new, but be cautious to get the Gmini400 and not the 402 or 402cc as the software hasn't been hacked for these models yet.

hope this helps

Discogod

Thanks to all who have contributed so far!

Having thought on this some more i feel 2GB would be too small... i'll have to up it to at least 5GB.

Sir_Bargains-A-Lot - your creative zen micro suggestion sounds good - i'll cehck the product out to see how it fits with me Where do you suggest i can get it for as cheap as £100? My only ideas involve using pricerunner, kelkoo & the such like!

wolfman - thanks for the CDEX prompt - i'm actually all OK for file conversions as it is anyway, i think CDEX is one i use sometimes.

SiMaster - whilst i really appreciate your lengthy input i feel it's quite wide of the mark. I'm not after a video player, i also quickly searched to look for an approx price & it was around £200 on pricerunner, way over my budget anyway! But - the Archos Gmini XS202 20GB has already been suggested to me on AV forums - different model but same make & I read up on that & it seems pretty ideal... all depends on what else i can get for what price. I think the final choice may come down to value for money, maybe taking in a refurb.

More opinions very welcome!

Omertron

If you are taking your player on holiday (and here I'll make an assumption that you aren't taking a laptop or similar with you), you'll have to make sure that you can charge the player from a standard wall socket or has replacable batteries. So a USB only charger may not be the best option unless you find a USB plug charger on ebay or the like.

Another vote for the Creative range from me

Discogod

Omertron wrote:

If you are taking your player on holiday (and here I'll make an assumption that you aren't taking a laptop or similar with you), you'll have to make sure that you can charge the player from a standard wall socket or has replacable batteries. So a USB only charger may not be the best option unless you find a USB plug charger on ebay or the like.

Another vote for the Creative range from me

Yep, thanks Omertron - that's one of my criteria! I've seen a few USB only players but they'll be useless to me!

How does the Creative software stack up? Am i able to just select the songs i want to copy onto the player? I'm not going to want to copy my whole collection over.

SiMaster

Creatives are just hard drives so it is just drag and drop with music files - real simple. No software needed. Cool.

Sir_Bargains-A-Lot

Disco - SiMaster is right - you can use the Creatives as a lettered drive and just drag and drop - but as for the software that comes bundled with it, you can indeed just drop files in and take them out as you want - sync-ing isn't a forced option. Their software (from my experience) is simple but intuitive - it has a wizard for helping you add stuff, and to search for your files, it has a decent enough artist name/CD name/track name search.

The basic 6GB Zen Micro is currently available at £120 on https://www.hmv.co.uk - as long as you don't mind it in blue! I understand that in the voucher section of this site, there is a '£20 off spends of over £100' voucher which will bring it 100 quid.

Failing that, I think Play.com is reasonably priced on them - or eBay may be the next step.

Discogod

well, blue happens to be my fave colour, i've nowt against that one

I've been reading up on this zen micro in the past couple of hours & have found alot of users complaining that it's not reiable - things stop working, or work intermittently.

does the zen micro actually come with AC Adapter? I'm reading that it only comes with USB. Looks like chargers are about £8 on ebay (incl postage)

SiMaster

no matter what mp3 player you look at people will slag off! the creative is a really good player. you have to remember that a good review is worth 10 bad ones as people ar emore likely to spend time writing reviews when there annoyed.