Tell me why I should buy an iPod over an MP3/MP4 player

Fifer

For decent sound quality, a pretty usable UI, easily pocketable DAP with upgradable memory, good CODEC support (ogg, FLAC and others as well as MP3), and FM radio and a decent price, you can't go far wrong with a Sansa Fuze. You can get an 8GB for £60 (new, not refurb) and add more memory with uSD cards (I've added a 16GB to mine).

Leopard

Dreamnine wrote: »

True. The SQ of mp3s on a mobile, though, is poor.

It would be fair to concede that buying a 16 GB Sandisk MicroSD card for my mobile 'phone (a Nokia N82) cost me £31 but its sound quality is very good through decent headphones. It's fine even through decent Bluetooth headphones.

Now, £31 is more than Marty J's third of £79 for an 8 GB iPod Nano but I only need about 10 GB to 12 GB for music (in AAC at 256 kbps) and the rest is free for use by the N82's camera. (Which - with 5 megapixels, a Carl Zeiss lens and a Xenon flash - is a damn sight better than the camera on any iPhone.)

So, why buy an additional device at all, if your 'phone can give you what you need?

Dreamnine

Fifer wrote: »

For decent sound quality, a pretty usable UI, easily pocketable DAP with upgradable memory, good CODEC support (ogg, FLAC and others as well as MP3), and FM radio and a decent price, you can't go far wrong with a Sansa Fuze. You can get an 8GB for £60 (new, not refurb) and add more memory with uSD cards (I've added a 16GB to mine).

The Fuze is a bit long in the tooth these days and the EQ sucks.

Marty_J

Leopard wrote: »

Now, £31 is more than Marty J's third of £79 for an 8 GB iPod Nano but I only need about 10 GB to 12 GB for music (in AAC at 256 kbps) and the rest is free for use by the N82's camera.

If you're just going to be using it with your phone, you might as well encode the music at a lower bit-rate (160 kbps AAC VBR would probably be perfectly acceptable) and save yourself some space and money.

(Which - with 5 megapixels, a Carl Zeiss lens and a Xenon flash - is a damn sight better than the camera on any iPhone.)

The camera on the Iphone 3G S is a vast improvement over the old one:



The touch to focus feature is very nice, and it can also do spot metering, which is quite impressive for a camera-phone.

So, why buy an additional device at all, if your 'phone can give you what you need?

Well you were all for the seperation of data devices and phones; not so for music devices?

Leopard

Marty_J wrote: »

If you're just going to be using it with your phone, you might as well encode the music at a lower bit-rate (160 kbps AAC VBR would probably be perfectly acceptable) and save yourself some space and money.

Well, my iTunes Library is all encoded at 256 AAC - my hearing is not what it once was, so that's good enough for me - and it's simply more convenient to keep all my music in the same format so that I can just drag and drop stuff into and out of my 'phone whenever I like. Not very MSE - I should be thrifty and use a smaller capacity card - but to me it isn't worth the hassle of changing it.

The camera on the Iphone 3G S is a vast improvement over the old one:



The touch to focus feature is very nice, and it can also do spot metering, which is quite impressive for a camera-phone.

Yeah, that's a big gain. And spot metering is a nice feature. Lovely dog, too!

I took some nice photos with the 3.2 MP camera in my K800i but the problem comes when you want to crop and enlarge them - which one often wants to do because the camera hasn't got an optical zoom. I greatly appreciate the 5 MP of my N82 for that reason. Both have Xenon flash - the K800i taught me the value of that!

Well you were all for the seperation of data devices and phones; not so for music devices?

Fair question. You'll understand my point about keeping the data device and the telephoning device apart - so that I can look at the data while speaking on the 'phone - but why then have a third device for music if that function can be incorporated into one of the other two without inconvenience? Particularly if, like I, you use a Bluetooth headset.

If I'm going to take the dog for a walk I just carry a 'phone with me - I don't want a data device - but it's nice to be able to listen to music at the same time. It's handy to have the GPS facility, too, when the dog gets ambitious!

tomstickland

Subjective opinion of sound quality is a very odd thing. I've never understood why hi-fi mags don't bother running some test discs through with various sine waves or whatever and analysing what comes out in terms of waveform. ie: conduct a proper frequency response analysis. Instead that use adjectives that don't mean anything.

Marty_J

Leopard wrote: »

Well, my iTunes Library is all encoded at 256 AAC - my hearing is not what it once was, so that's good enough for me - and it's simply more convenient to keep all my music in the same format so that I can just drag and drop stuff into and out of my 'phone whenever I like. Not very MSE - I should be thrifty and use a smaller capacity card - but to me it isn't worth the hassle of changing it.

That's the format I use too; I believe it's called "iTunes plus" now.

Yeah, that's a big gain. And spot metering is a nice feature. Lovely dog, too!

I took some nice photos with the 3.2 MP camera in my K800i but the problem comes when you want to crop and enlarge them - which one often wants to do because the camera hasn't got an optical zoom. I greatly appreciate the 5 MP of my N82 for that reason. Both have Xenon flash - the K800i taught me the value of that!

More mega-pixels certainly helps with cropping, I can't argue with that. You can buy a zoom lens for the iPhone though.

Fair question. You'll understand my point about keeping the data device and the telephoning device apart - so that I can look at the data while speaking on the 'phone - but why then have a third device for music if that function can be incorporated into one of the other two without inconvenience? Particularly if, like I, you use a Bluetooth headset.

If I'm going to take the dog for a walk I just carry a 'phone with me - I don't want a data device - but it's nice to be able to listen to music at the same time. It's handy to have the GPS facility, too, when the dog gets ambitious!

Well that's why I have an iPod Touch; data and music/video in one device suits me. I'm not bothered about mobile phones (I don't really like them to be honest), but I'll probably end up getting myself an iPhone one of these days. It's just too much of a draw and I'm surprised I've lasted this long!

DCFC79

Dreamnine wrote: »

True. The SQ of mp3s on a mobile, though, is poor.

maybe so but ive put music on my phone before and i cnat say ive been unimpressed with the quality

Fifer

Dreamnine wrote: »

The Fuze is a bit long in the tooth these days and the EQ sucks.

It was launched just 6 months before the current Nano, not that age matters unless fashion is an issue. I bought it for its sound quality, features and form factor. What does being 'long in the tooth' make it lack against its competition? What would you recommend as an alternative?

As for sound quality, I use it regularly with UE Super.fi 5 in-ear phones (fairly good quality for mobile listening) and consider it fantastic audio quality for the price. When I bought it, I did some listening tests with my Sennheiser HD650s and Grado SR-90s and was pretty impressed.

baby_fuzz

Raksha wrote: »

As it says - what can an iPod do that an MP3/4 player can't?

Nothing. I was given an ipod. don;t really like it. itunes is an abomonation. I'd go for a zen mp3 /mp4 player.