Which personal MP3 player?

OK, so it's time to get a personal MP3 player. I could get an IPOD as they
are all the rage. But I'm not sure on value for money here. Any
suggestions. I want it to listen mainly to music and audio books on the
180 mile commute I do every day.

 

I love my Rio, but I don't know if they are still being made....

Ali

 

I have a Creative Zen and it does the trick.

 

I have a Creative MuVo - the one with the FM tuner, (although that's not
terribly good unless you've got a strong signal). 512MB. I find it to be
OK. Simple to use and easy to load up: just pull off the power unit and
plug it into a USB port. There's some software with it but since I run
Linux I've never used it: just drag and drop whatever I want. I'm not
using it as a repository, obviously: just something so I can listen to
music on the move.

It uses a single AAA battery which means if I'm caught
short somewhere I can just buy a new battery. (I usually use a
rechargeable battery.)

The ear-phones aren't terribly good: I use a set of Sony in-ear things
most of the time, which are OK.

 

I'd suggest that you need something with lots of storage if you're going
to be using it for 3 hours or so a day.

The iPod takes a lot of beating. Sure you may spend a little more on it
but it's such a good user experience and if you're relying on it to fill
3 hours a day how much is the 50 or 100 quid you might save by buying an
inferior copy actually worth to you?

 

iPod has the best range of accessories available.

 

eric the brave scribbled on the back of a napkin:

I've got an iRiver H120 (20GB harddisk player, 'bout two years old
now), a mate of mine has the model after that. We like them, they sound
good and play most formats and generally "just work".

That said, it's replacement will most likely be an iPod as they are
street ahead of everybody else that I know of from a usability
perspective. Not to mention that they've got the infrastructure whereas
most other players are, well, just a harddisk you copy files onto.

 

iRiver H320.

HTH.

 

What's the problem with that?

What cracks me up is all these players that insist that you have to have XP
and media player 9, then when you plug them in pop up as an external drive.
This happened with a friend's that I offered to put some stuff on since her
CD was broked. ISTR it was a Creative and *all over* the box were dire
warnings that it would *not* work without XP and media player.
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Quite a few UKRMers have iRivers. I like the ability to upgrade the
firmware. My H320 plays videos with the latest firmware (all free),
for example. Add to that the ability for it to act as a USB "On The
Go" Host (plug your digital camera in via USB and download all the
pictures from the card to the iRiver hard drive to free up space on
your camera), encode MP3 via Line In or the internal mic (with decent
gain control) and you can even record via the built in radio tuner.
Oh, fab battery life and I personally think it's unbeatable -
especially as I encode all of my music as OGGs and it plays 'em out of
the box. Also uses SRS WOW for proper bass if you want it, and to
compliment SRS WOW it comes with two excellent Sennheiser 'bud'
earphones which actually produce bass!

I installed linux on it a few weeks ago and played Doom on it. If you
don't like the OS it ships with then install RockBox and choose the
iPod skin if you want, or make your own skin featuring big fluffy
cows.

 

Be very careful; it's not hard to get an iTunes habit.

 

Good point. I do like the ipod.

 

Cool It looks like a shoot our between iRiver and Ipod. Now to find one

Thanks all.

 

I'm bringing my iRiver to BoSM at the weekend if you want to play with
it, I'm sure someone will have an iPod with them too.

 

Elly bought an iRiver, on your recommendation amongst others. She
loves it and it does everything she needs it to. She'd rather have an
OGG habit than an iTune habit, which seems eminently sensible to me.

 

Go for the 60Gb iPOD if you've got the dosh. You won't regret it. I
haven't.

Works great in storing music, films, contacts, podcasts and doubles up
as a portable disk drive.

The battery last for 8-10 hours, depending upon use and there are so
many add-ons to it, that you'll always have fun.

 

In terms of gb/£, Ipods are not good value compared with others.

In terms of ease of use and enjoyment of use, they're lightyears
ahead.

 

I found I got an Amazon habit instead. I'd rather buy a kosher cd
from Amazon for the same amount of money as an album from iTunes.

iTunes is great, but they need to bring the price down to make up for
not providing a cd or cover art.

In fact the ideal would be to place an order with iTunes and be able
to download on the spot, and for them to then ship you the cd.

 

I have the 1GB version of this - it's fine, and really small, which I
like.

yup - I have a pair of Sony Fontopia ear buds, and they're great.

Having said that, I'm probably going to get a decent MP3 phone to
replace the MuVo with as my next phone. Either a Sony W810i or maybe
the all-singing Nokia N91 when it comes out.

 

AOL.

I average out spending over 100 quid/month from Amazon.

For the time being I still like to have the physical media. I expect
I'll have changed my tune in about 5 years time, mind.