i-pod or MP3 player recommendations

thehairybuilder

Looking for either an i-pod or MP3 player for a present , not sure about the differences . Any advice on prices , specification would be appreciated
thanx

ManAtHome

The good and bad news is that there are zillions of 'em about (an iPod is also an MP3 player by the way). To narrow thing down a bit, depends on a few basic things:
1. What sort of computer will they be using (if it's a Mac, iPod will probably be 'best fit', many others just as good if on Windows).
2. Are they going to be bouncing around like a loonie (main grouping of MP3 players is solid-state which stores songs in memory and disk-based which use a miniature hard disk - not as joggable.!).
3. Are they more interested in 'style' than functionality (may depend on age - I don't agree, but do understand 'playground cred').
4. Do they listen to music (almost) constantly (the larger capacity models hold enough for over a year's regular listening - handy for round the world trips but a bit over the top for 15mins each way on the bus). Also worth thinking about battery type and life - bit of a !!!!!! if you're nowhere near a power supply and your batteries go.
5. Are they likely to want to also use it for transferring data (some makes need you to install drivers - less convenient).

There are many well-recommended makes - iPod, Creative (Zen), Sony, iRiver, Rio, Archos, Samsung, Philips (not in any particular order) which are likely to sound very similar when on the move, difficult to judge the combinatiosn of headphones and ears unless they're your own.!

gk172

I took into consideration the battery, with the ipod its built in and when it does need replacing you have to send it back to apple ($109) but the micro zen has a replaceable battery which can be bought form £20-30 also the ipod doesnt play wma files but the micro zen does.

Price wize it really depends on your budget, we bought our daughter (11) a 256 logik from currys i got it to hold 140 .wma files and has a normal battery and you can get them bigger from same place, then i think if you looking at the 1 gb ones you are looking at roughly £100 ish for the ipod shuffle or the creative muvo, then you go up to the i pod mini/micro zen which are roughly £130-150 i think with storage of 5 gb which can hold 2500 mp3 files and then your ipod with 20gb upwards which i never really looked at as way too much for my requirements. Another consideration is how it charges a few of the mp3 players we looked at were charge via pc only or you had to buy a mains charger which can bump the price up, the ipod range fell into that category.

Hope that helps;)