4 GB MP3 player under £30 delivered

MSE_Martin

What's the deal?

As memory storage gets cheaper and more capacious, so too do budget portable MP3 players. It's now possible to get a 4 GB model for £30 delivered, and one with a built-in FM radio and voice recorder for £34.

• iTronics 4GB MP3 player £29.99 in-store. Argos* currently has this 4GB MP3 player on sale for £29.99. It's not a top of the range model, but it can hold around 1000 songs. It has an LCD screen so you can see what you're listening to, and comes with headphones, a USB cable and all the software you need to get it going.

• Sumvision 4GB MP3 player with FM Radio £33.94 delivered. This model, which is available from web retailer Tecno.co.uk bears more than a passing resemblance to the one above (and countless other budget players) but packs in a bit more technology. It will play WMA (Windows Media Audio) files as well as MP3s and has a built-in FM radio and voice recorder, so you can also use it as a dictaphone. Plus it transfers files over USB 2.0 which is around 10 times faster than the older USB standard connection, saving you a fair bit of time. Oh, and it's available in a few colours too!

Anything else I should know?

You'll need a computer to put your music onto these players. Both come with driver software for both PC and Mac hardware.

Battery life can be an issue with these budget players. While both of those above are advertised as providing 'up to 8 hours' of usage, 4 hours is probably a more reasonable estimate. It may be worth investing in a couple of rechargeable AAAs if you plan to use the player often.

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You shouldn’t notice any difference, the links don’t impact the product at all and the editorial line (the things I write) is NEVER impacted by the revenue. If it isn’t possible to get an affiliate link for the best product, it is still recommended and still included. The following argos.co.uk are identical unaffiliated links provided for the sake of transparency. Click on the following link for more details on how this site's financed.

john-boi1

Please be aware that many of these bargain mp3 players have a very short battery life sometimes as low as 2 to 3 hours.

So if this is important to you make sure you confirm battery life before purchase

zenjamie

I've just returned my second one of these. Loading more than about 2Gb of music causes an error message and appears to corrupt the player - totally unable to connect to it from file manager.

Could be that I've just been unlucky but...

Rhyburgh

I bought one on ebay last month for £20, can't really get cheaper than that and everything seems ok with it.

Just checked and an 8GB one went for £24!!

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Brand-New-8GB-FM-DVR-USB-MP4-MP3-Player-Free-Ship_W0QQitemZ300097197361QQcategoryZ73839QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Stockie

Two points, the argos one you need to point out that it's 29.99 plus p&p @ 4.95 unless you reserve it and collect in store in which case it's 29.99 plus petrol/parking money. and secondly there's very little stock of it around at the moment in argos stores and home delivery only is sold out at the moment (3rd april)

Stockie

ShimSham

Rhyburgh wrote: »

I bought one on ebay last month for £20, can't really get cheaper than that and everything seems ok with it.

Just checked and an 8GB one went for £24!!

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Brand-New-8GB-FM-DVR-USB-MP4-MP3-Player-Free-Ship_W0QQitemZ300097197361QQcategoryZ73839QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Did you buy, from the ebay seller you linked to?

I was a bit suspicious of this seller, being able to sell his players so cheaply. So I checked their negative feedback on http://www.toolhaus.org/: http://toolhaus.org/cgi-bin/negs?User=chowkitm+&Dirn=Received+by&ref=home

As I suspected, this ebayer is hacking the MP3 player, to make the capacity, appear to be bigger than it really is. Some of the lucky buyers managed to get 2GB , but one person got as little as 512MB.

The following site has more info on this scam.
http://www.xbox0.co.uk/

sandy2_2

Sorry to be thick but... Anyway, I was considering one of these for holidays etc but I want to download audio books rather than music can these contraptions deal with that? also not wanting to listen to the same book over and over again while away and not wanting to take laptop along to reload different book, is there any MP3/4 player that I can just plug in a memory stick and listen away? or should I be considering something else if so what?

Flimber

Sandy2,

These are fine for Audiobooks. Ideal in fact.

Russyfoot

A word of caution.
I've downloaded a few audiobooks and often they are one large file. The MP3 player I have (albeit and older Philips one) does not remember where it was when you switch it off and goes to the beginning of the file you were last listening to. No much use for a five hour file. Luckily my daughter bought me an Ipod Shuffle for my birthday (more money than sense) and this does remember the point of switch off.

Russ

Rhyburgh

ShimSham wrote: »

Did you buy, from the ebay seller you linked to?

I was a bit suspicious of this seller, being able to sell his players so cheaply. So I checked their negative feedback on http://www.toolhaus.org/: http://toolhaus.org/cgi-bin/negs?User=chowkitm+&Dirn=Received+by&ref=home

As I suspected, this ebayer is hacking the MP3 player, to make the capacity, appear to be bigger than it really is. Some of the lucky buyers managed to get 2GB , but one person got as little as 512MB.

The following site has more info on this scam.
http://www.xbox0.co.uk/

No didn't actually buy from this person this was just the nearest auction to finish - wasn't recommending anything, just saying what was about.

timboid

Russyfoot / sandy2,

I, too, use my MP3 player more for audiobooks than music. SanDisk have a range of players that have both a fixed memory capacity and an expansion slot that takes either an SD card or, more recently, microSD cards.

I used to use a SanDisk MP3 Companion which worked with their Cruzer Micro USB stick, but I found it was too easy to jog the tracks.

Now I use a Frontier Labs NEX3+ (https://www.frontierlabs.com) which has no in-built memory, but takes SD cards (I use a selection of 1GB SanDisk Ultra II Plus SDs which have a built-in USB connector). It also takes standard or rechargeable AAA batteries (about 7 hours playback time), has an FM radio and FM transmitter (for use in the car) and built-in voice recorder ... how about that!! Admittedly, I found the FM transmitter a bit weak 'cos a modern car's 'shell' is so thick, the aerial can't pick up the signal. It's small and compact and has a rubberised outer coating to protect it from bangs and knocks, comes in various colours but only has a monochrome LCD.

For those audiobooks that are in one great big glob of a file, I use an MP3 Splitter to divide them into 10 or 20MB chunks, then if the battery goes, I can skip forward to relevant chunk and continue. There are loads of free ones you can download off the web.

By the way, both the SanDisk and NEX3+ players mentioned above DO continue from where you left off if you switch the player off, but not if the battery flakes out during play.

Hope this helps!