Halp! MP3 player advice

[Kayatani]

I left my MP3 player at the gym and some kind soul decided to adopt it, so I need a new one!

I'm not a major audiophile and I don't really keep up with these kinds of things so if anyone can give insight towards what brands are good/bad, where to look and any suggestions for specific players would be appreciated.

I had a gen 2 ipod nano, and that worked well enough so I'd like something similar - the only thing it didn't do that I would have liked was shuffle playlists on the go. So ideally stuff I'm looking for:

-Similar size to my old ipod (not tiny like the current nanos, and not xbox huge)
-4-8GB ssd
-Robust
-LCD screen, I want to see stuff like artist/song/album/duration/etc
-Not terribly expensive (Around £30-50)

fanks

[Caiyuo]

What do you think of this? http://www.sandisk.com/products/sans...zip-mp3-player

Has expandable storage, color screen, tiny and the clip is handy for work-outs or just convenience. Cheap, too, just not sure on the playlists. I have the predecessor without the color screen and it's been pretty great, take it on walks and clip it to my pocket everyday.

[Kayatani]

What do you think of this? http://www.sandisk.com/products/sans...zip-mp3-player

Has expandable storage, color screen, tiny and the clip is handy for work-outs or just convenience. Cheap, too, just not sure on the playlists. I have the predecessor without the color screen and it's been pretty great, take it on walks and clip it to my pocket everyday.

That one seems pretty good, though it's a little smaller than I'd like. Would a fancy colour screen be more of a drain on battery life compared to a simple text interface? FM radio thing is pretty neat also.

[Caiyuo]

Yeah, I think the zip gets about 8 hours and the regular Clip+ gets 15, but either can be extended with the Rockbox firmware. I don't know of any others besides these and what Apple offers, though.

[Niya]

Sandisk makes quite good MP3 players, i've had a Sansa Fuze (not Fuze+) for years now and it just works. It's small but still has a color display in a decent size so you can read artist, track title etc (plus album art) without too much scrolling. Bought it together with a fitting rubber coat back then and already dropped it countless times, no problems so far. Oh, and the promised 24h of playback time with one charge aren't a joke, they're real. The display shouldn't have too much of an influence on it, after all on default settings it gets turned off after 10 seconds when you don't hit any buttons.
And since you said you're audiophile, one thing might be interesting for you: the Sandisk players all support FLAC, that's a lossless codec that produces larger files but preserves quality. So if you rip a CD and want to keep the quality at max, you can convert them to FLAC instead of MP3 or other stuff and be happy with it ^^

Speaking for the Fuze, but it should still be the same for the Fuze+, it supports playlists in M3U format that you can create on your PC. I think you could also create them on the player itself, but never bothered to try it since it's easier from the PC ^^ No matter whether you have a playlist, a folder or just a bunch of songs running, all of them can be shuffled and/or repeated. I have mine set up so it always runs on shuffle repeat, but you can change that on the fly.
BTW, the Fuze is recognized as a mass storage device under Windows, so you can fill it with music directly (just like an USB stick) and don't need a program like iTunes for it.

One last thing to mention, don't know if it's interesting for you: the Fuze (and probably Fuze+ too) has builtin functions for audio books. It turns off shuffle/repeat for them and remembers where you stopped, quite neat and because of this and a friend who made me curious i always have a whole collection of audio books with me xD

[Caiyuo]

^ audiobook support was why I picked my sansa player in the first place. Didn't think to mention all of the little bonuses, but Niya's like the local tech deity so I'd say given the testimonial they're a pretty safe bet lol.

I'll just add that depending on the USB mode, you can use it like a USB stick or a regular MP3 player when connecting because it supports both (MTP+MSC) so if one or the other appeals to you, you're good. Also I don't know how common it is, but with a media player like Mediamonkey doing your syncing for you, you can have playlists automatically generated for however much or little you want.

I couldn't say myself regarding battery life, googling just seemed to turn up a few sour users who were used to the clip+ battery life compared to the zip, but like Niya said the brightness and duration of backlight can be messed with to extend the life.

[Kayatani]

Awright, thanks guys. Looks like I'll go with one of the Sansa players - is getting a refurbished one a terrible idea as opposed to buying new? I see lots of refurbished ones on ebay for under half the original price

[Niya]

Hm... i'd say personal choice. I for myself would probably never pick a refurbished one just to save a few bucks since i tend to keep my MP3 players for years and years and years.... ^^ My last player before the fuze was a Creative Zen Touch with a built-in 1,8" HDD, so it was huge and heavy, but i still kept it for ~10 years. The only reason why i replaced it was that the battery started to die and the firmware was going crazy sometimes, but otherwise it was still working just fine ^^ And my fuze has been running since august 2009 ^^
With refurbished stuff you never know what the owner before you did to it and if they were able to fix all that. Sure, with todays solid state MP3 players that have less and less physical buttons that doesn't have much impact any more, but still... ^^;

One last note since i read through the comments for the fuze+ on amazon.de: MANY people were complaining that the old fuze was better and that some functions were lost on the fuze+ yadda-yadda-yadda... When you get one, the first thing to do would be to update the firmware to the newest release. Sandisk is one of those companies that sometimes mess little stuff up on the first firmware releases, but they bring new ones out and fix that or even add new features.

but Niya's like the local tech deity so I'd say given the testimonial they're a pretty safe bet lol.

Wat? ^^ Was that a compliment? ^^;

[Caiyuo]

Depending on what model you decide to get, refurbished or new will both be pretty cheap so really unless they were DOA I imagine you'd get your money's worth.

Wat? ^^ Was that a compliment? ^^;

Yeah, lol you seem to know just about everything related to tech.

[Kohan]

I have a refurbished 2GB Sansa with Rockbox that's been sitting in my glovebox for three years or so, and it still works perfectly—when I rarely use it. It's essentially my "emergency music," only to be used when other options are exhausted, and despite being left inside an occasionally steaming hot car for months on end, its performance hasn't faltered a bit.

In case you missed it, I noted that it was refurbished. Keep that in mind.

I've bought several Sansa players (of various model types) for numerous people, almost always refurbished, and none have ever stopped working. They may have been forgotten as bigger and better options came along, but they still function fine.

Considering, whatever refurbishing process Sansa has, it's a damn fucking good one. If you buy new or refurbished, I doubt you're going to be disappointed. I always recommend Sansa players to everyone.

[Kayatani]

Thanks for the input, gonna give refurbished a shot