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Topic: Portable MP3 players - which would you recommend? (Read 5742 times) previous topic - next topic
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Portable MP3 players - which would you recommend?

I need a portable MP3 player. It should be small, light and easy to use, preferably for use when walking/doing sports. A good amount of storage would be great. I was thinking about Panasonic SV-SD85, as it uses SD cards, is very light and small and not expensive, coming with a 128mb card. Do you have any other suggestion?
Price would be taken into account too.  I don't know any other models which can use memory cards. iRiver has good players, but I didn't see any model which uses mem card.
Your opinions would be great.

Portable MP3 players - which would you recommend?

Reply #1 –
What it your price range?

I own an iRiver iHP-120 HDD player.  I like it but it's around $300 US.  I don't own any flash players so I can't really say anything about those.
Nero AAC 1.5.1.0: -q0.45

Portable MP3 players - which would you recommend?

Reply #2 –
Quote
I need a portable MP3 player. It should be small, light and easy to use, preferably for use when walking/doing sports. A good amount of storage would be great. I was thinking about Panasonic SV-SD85, as it uses SD cards, is very light and small and not expensive, coming with a 128mb card. Do you have any other suggestion?
Price would be taken into account too.  I don't know any other models which can use memory cards. iRiver has good players, but I didn't see any model which uses mem card.
Your opinions would be great.
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Buyer beware: Panasonic's SD card players (one of which I once owned, the SD-80) require you to use Real Player to encode and transfer audio to the device. Dropping files to a SD card never seemed to work for my player, as all it would accept were DRM'ed files. I'd check Panasonic's website to be sure, though, as this may have changed in the 2 years since I dumped the thing. Also, be aware that Panasonic's AAC implementation is sub-optimal compared to modern encoders (like QT and Nero) and only lets one encode files as high as 128kbps. Last I checked, they still hadn't updated their encoder algorithm.

That being said, I can personally recommend iRiver's IFP line of flash players: great sound, great battery life, plays VBR without a hitch, encodes voice and mp3 from the line-in, and includes an FM stereo. Best part: no DRM. Yes, they don't have a memory card slot, but with something like 256MB, how often would you really need to swap songs? I have the 128MB model and use it for about an hour per day (for the bus), and just swap songs from my PowerBook the next morning. Plus, they also support Vorbis down to 96.1kbps, which works out to 3 hours of decent-sounding music per 128MB of memory.

Portable MP3 players - which would you recommend?

Reply #4 –
EDIT: Should've read the oringal post which made it clear that you were only interested in players with mem cards.  Oops. 
I just discovered Opus. Holy mackerel!

Portable MP3 players - which would you recommend?

Reply #5 –
Quote
EDIT: Should've read the oringal post which made it clear that you were only interested in players with mem cards.  Oops. 
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Not really, please let me know your opinion. I might change mine. After I read the comment about Panasonic, DRM and Real One  I am considering other options, please post your recommendations. It would be great if it had a mem card option, like the MPIO omikron23 posted above, and since I can't find the Panasonic players anywhere now, I would be glad it somebody could give me better options.
And thanks already for all your replies!

Portable MP3 players - which would you recommend?

Reply #6 –
I use Panasonic SL-SX 420 (MP3/CD)

Skip protection about 3 mins for mp3 
RC included
Integrated battery charger
Nice blue color 

Cheap!! It costs (in Latvia) about 70$ (+3$ for some ReWritable disks  )

Portable MP3 players - which would you recommend?

Reply #7 –
I looked at a number of brands and settled on iRiver for a flash player as well.  Prices have come down on their ifp-300 series quite a bit.  You can pick up a 512MB unit for small money now.  Playing ogg files I was getting close to 24 hours on a AA battery.

Switched over to one of their HD players several months back...a lot can be said for 12 hour battery life playing ogg Q8 files....a 20GB unit will hold about 3000 tracks at that codec quality level.

YMMV,

rs
Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us. Jerry Garcia-Grateful Dead

Portable MP3 players - which would you recommend?

Reply #8 –
Quote
I use Panasonic SL-SX 420 (MP3/CD)

Skip protection about 3 mins for mp3 
RC included
Integrated battery charger
Nice blue color 

Cheap!! It costs (in Latvia) about 70$ (+3$ for some ReWritable disks  )
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I already have one Panasonic CD/MP3 player, they are great but too bulky for sports.

Portable MP3 players - which would you recommend?

Reply #9 –
If you want an SD player, look into the Rio S30 and S35. I have a S30 and a 256MB SD card myself, works very well for day-to-day usage.

Portable MP3 players - which would you recommend?

Reply #10 –
I'm a newbie and I just bought the new iRiver H320 last week - it's use friendly enough and has a colour screen. Sound quality is okay for my ears.

Portable MP3 players - which would you recommend?

Reply #12 –
I would go for the iPod mini. You get room for 1000 songs in a very tiny and easy to use enclosure. Everyone I know who have those tiny flash based mp3 players throw them away because of the bad user interface and very limited storage..

Portable MP3 players - which would you recommend?

Reply #13 –
Quote
I would go for the iPod mini. You get room for 1000 songs in a very tiny and easy to use enclosure. Everyone I know who have those tiny flash based mp3 players throw them away because of the bad user interface and very limited storage..
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The only problem is that they are very expensive compared to a 128MB flash player. It sounds like the original poster is looking for something a bit cheaper than $249 (correct me if I am wrong!). Let's also not forget the awful battery life.