MP3 Player Advice Needed
 

Can anybody point me in the right direction for buying an MP3 Player?

I'm looking for a small, compact, neat looking one with an FM Radio, a decent battery life, 128Mb Memory thats upgradable!

Main purpose will be for listening while @ work.

Thanks,

Bex.

Have u lot lost your tongues? :p

yhpm

Thanks for the offer J4Mou.

Im just looking for advice atm!

So does no-one on here have any ideas for me?

Someone's gotta have a portable MP3 Player that they can suggest.

Becky :-)

Well being female you will obviously need amazing value for money for it to be a worthy purchase :p which is why I will suggest getting a pda. You can use it as an mp3 player, but then you have all those added features of diary, emails, games etc. The sound quality is good and the memory size can be pretty much what you want in either compact flash or secure digital media.

Have a look at the dell axim version as its a lot cheaper than a compaq ipaq and very good value for money. They don't come with a mirror or lipstick holder though :D

Thanks for that, unfortunately, I don't happen to be your normal "Female Type", I just want a small, cheap (ish) MP3 player that I can add too later and that my fella can use also.

I've seen some nice ones on eBay but want to make sure that Im not buying any old cheap crap!

Has anyone actually got one?

Becky.

I brought one from dabs about £50 with radio and its pretty good.

http://www.dabs.com/uk/productView.htm?quicklinx=2NGV

Hold on a bit and get an iPod mini. No Radio though.

Bought an Ipod mini in US when I was over in the states last month - lovely bit of kit. Beautiful design and interface ( IMHO ), great size and 4GB is enough space for me to be going on with - could never understand 40GB Ipods as I'd never listen to all of that. Anyway everything looks peachy with Ipod mini until you start reading this sort of stuff -

http://ipodlounge.com/ipodnews_comme...d=3546_0_7_0_C

So I'm sort of looking at it going - hmmmm. Maybe worthwhile making sure this problem gets resolved before you go down the IPod mini route, then again I'm sure there's 1000s of satisfied owners.

I've also got an IBEAD - which I must say I use more, best gadget I've ever bought love it to bits - can't fault it at all. More info here:

http://www.mp3players.co.uk/site/uk/...ews/ibead.html

Hope this helps - BTW www.mp3players.co.uk are top guys, great service and great range of products.

Chunky

Oh and the IBEAD has inbuilt FM Radio.....

Got to say that I've started using iTunes on my PC as a player, the amusing thing is that it will not work on my Mac because of the network shares that the music is stored on :-) Apple really are too busy satisfying the demands of marketing to get the products right and I suspect that iTunes and the iPods are so good more by luck than by design.

However, it really looks like Apple may have made some fundamental design errors with the mini and the full size iPod as well. I have no direct experience of either but a few folks whose judgement I would respect are reporting distortion in the HF with the full sized iPods. Some have suggested fundamental design flaws in the audio stages but I have no evidence of that.

Also, the iPod will not segue tracks without a "hole" inbetween them. That is a pain for some classical or live material.

I use a very old 128Meg Intel MP3 player, but they haven't even been made for years, it has a radio and does the job just fine but I am afraid it's not much use if you can't buy one. I'm not convinced that Intel did the right thing pulling out of that market.

The mini-jacks that are often (usually) used on portable music devices are not the most reliable connector on earth but it is possible to make them work pretty well providing you are not looking at a lot of insertions etc. Sounds like Apple have cocked this up a little on the mini and are paying for it. If the connector is on the board and not chassis mounted then each insertion puts pressure not just on the socket but also on the whole circuit board. On the other hand it is a very cheap way to make the gear.

As professional audio gear gets smaller the pro market are having to address the same problem of providing reliable but small headphone connectors. Many tried the standard 3.5mm mini-jack but found it to be unreliable. However, of late I have seen at least one interesting solution that might have potential on consumer gear. The problem, of course, is that every pair of headphones out there, at least the portable ones, is terminated in a mini-jack so it looks like the consumer may have to just grin and bear it.

With all this in mind I couldn't recommend Apple, but have heard very good reports from users of the Creative MP3 players in their various guises. They still have mini jacks but are, perhaps, better thought out.

I have an iPod 20GB, and an iPod mini. Not a single whimper from either of them. No problems at all with them, also I work with 9 iPod owners, one of which has a 1st gen 5GB iPod, now 2 and a half years old. Again no problems.

Saying the iPod got popular by luck rather than design is daft. As a Mac owner yourself you will know that Apple concentrate on ensuring that the design of everything they do is taken with the utmost care and consideration for the user. Handles on the Powermacs, simplicity of the iMac, usability and looks of the iPod.

The list goes on and on, Apple design their products carefully.

Now I may be slightly biased as most of you will know I am very Pro Apple, but this gives me experience of their products and reliability. I also read everybit of news about Apple their is (www.macsurfer.com) and so far the number of iPod minis that Apple have received complaints about currently stands at under 1000. Bear in mind that Apple has sold almost 500,000 of them this is a non issue.

This headphone issue is reminiscent of the battery issue on the normal iPod not a massive problem, yet the iPod is a popular news making product that the papers can write about.

Once again I say, I have never had an issue with the design of any of the Apple products I own.