Best Inexpensive mp3 Player With Very Long Battery Life?

StarshipTitanic · Post by **StarshipTitanic** » 2004-11-20 07:31pm

I need to assemble my Ecksmass list and this is something I'm going to want for a vacation I'll be taking in the future.

Plekhanov · Post by **Plekhanov** » 2004-11-20 11:20pm

are you wanting a hd or flash player? If you're going for flash there are plenty out there which use standard (usually AA or AAA) batteries which would give you effectively limitless battery life

StarshipTitanic · Post by **StarshipTitanic** » 2004-11-20 11:25pm

Plekhanov wrote:are you wanting a hd or flash player? If you're going for flash there are plenty out there which use standard (usually AA or AAA) batteries which would give you effectively limitless battery life

I'd like a player with at least a gigabyte.

Plekhanov · Post by **Plekhanov** » 2004-11-20 11:50pm

If by atleast you mean 1gb or more there are a few options out there unless your British the following link will be of no use but www.advancedmp3players.co.uk are good and cheap they have a few options:

NEXIA 4GB £149

Dyne Tuny II 1GB £149

Creative MuVo Micro N200 1 GB £149

iRiver iFP-800 1GB £179

I don’t really know anything about Nexia, Dyne, or Creative mp3 players but Irivers are fantastic.

If you really need over a gig every player I’ve ever heard of has an integrated battery so you’ll need to lug around the charger or cradle. A word of advice don’t pay much attention to manufactures battery life figures (which have a tendency to be more than a little optimistic) try and find a review somewhere instead. Also make sure whatever player you get is usb 2 or firewire your times much too valuable to wait for 1gig+ of stuff to crawl down a usb1.1 cable.

StarshipTitanic · Post by **StarshipTitanic** » 2004-11-21 01:09am

I live in the US, and I don't think $300 is cheap for a 1 gb player...

Post by **Beowulf** » 2004-11-21 01:27am

Best bet if you want that much room is a HD based player... iPod mini's I've heard are good. Creative Nomad Zens have a lot more space though, and are possibly the same price... haven't checked.

Plekhanov · Post by **Plekhanov** » 2004-11-21 01:28am

I wouldn't know about prices in the US but over here that's pretty good value, still I expect you can find similar stuff (quite possibly at better prices) over there

The Kernel · Post by **The Kernel** » 2004-11-21 01:52am

The Creative Zen Micro is really nice and can be found for about $225. Also the iPod Mini is in the same price range and is equally good although they have their own strengths/weaknesses.

If you want a flash player, I suggest the iRiver iFP-799 which is an excellent 1GB player which is availible for the same price as the iPod Mini and the Creative Zen Micro. If you plan to work out a lot, it is good to go for a flash player, although the hard drive players are pretty good in this regard these days. The biggest advantage of a flash player is that with no moving parts, they potentially have a lot more reliability and this particular model also has a lot more features then the mini-hard drive based players.

SPOOFE · Post by **SPOOFE** » 2004-11-21 03:04am

I live in the US, and I don't think $300 is cheap for a 1 gb player...

You're really stuck with choosing between, at most, a 256 MB model, or a 4 gigabyte model, if you want to remain in the realm of "cheap". HD-based players don't go much lower than that in terms of capacity, and >256 megs of flash memory becomes prohibitively expensive.

So it sounds like you want a HD-based player.

Now here's where things get really sticky: Size. You can get the iPod mini or another similarly-sized product from Creative or iRiver, and it'll be a dinky little thing with 4 gigs of capacity... OR you can probably find a 15- or 20-gig player for about the same price, with the trade-off being size and weight.

The Archos Gmini 120 has 20 gigabytes of capacity, and can probably be found for around $200...

Lord Pounder · Post by **Lord Pounder** » 2004-11-21 07:57am

Rio Karma $300 for 20 gigs.

Jawawithagun · Post by **Jawawithagun** » 2004-11-21 11:16am

SPOOFE wrote:
I live in the US, and I don't think $300 is cheap for a 1 gb player...
The Archos Gmini 120 has 20 gigabytes of capacity, and can probably be found for around $200...

I got me one in Germany for €180. Good value, just not up to the promised 10 hours battery life.

SPOOFE · Post by **SPOOFE** » 2004-11-21 05:26pm

Yeah, just about every HD-based player has shitty battery life. There's no one player that's perfect (at least for me... and no, the iPod isn't perfect, not by a long shot).