I intend to get a MP3 player within the next few weeks, but there are so many on the market that I'm not really sure what to go for, so I thought I'd ask you guys, as I imagine some of you must know what to get and, maybe more importantly, what *not* to get.

I'd like something rather compact and light, with a large storing capacity (minimum 10 Gb - okay, okay, 5 Gb would do ), could store MP3 as well as various (Microsoft) computer data, and with something like a 24 hour battery. A radio tuner included would be even better.

One techie question, actually: can you program a set of songs on an MP3 player and set that program to repeat itself, like you do in any portable CD player?

Also, I know some MP3 players can be adapted into car tape-players, such as the I-River, but my car only has a CD player and no tape slot - is there any MP3 player that could play with that system?

As far as price is concerned, I've set my upper limit at 300 euro (around US$350, I believe?). Can I expect to get something good for this price?

So, um... help? Please?

Kaethel

Kaethel,
As you might know I'm going to recommend the Apple product:
iPod .

I'm not sure it's everything you're looking for but I think it should be OK for data storage (even microsoft data ) and I know that it works with Windows OS.

Whetever you end up with I hope you'll enjoy it for a long time.

Avia

Well, other than the fact that I don't know a way that it would work with your car, Kae (but then, that's what a CD burner is for ), I can't recommend better than the i-River IHP-140. It does everything you ask for. It's lightweight, easy to transport, has a fairly long battery life - 16 hours of playing time without needing to be recharged - and has a radio tuner and recording facility as well as being an MP3 player.

We love ours.

Edit: if your car stereo has an AUX (auxiliary) port or plug, you can play the i-River through it, my techie advisor says.


Wendy

That's probably what I would have got, Wendy (price limit notwithstanding), but it's not available any more. :p I'm actually looking for something similar to that one.

Avia, I checked out the I-Pod, and it looks pretty good, though the battery wouldn't get me all the way from France to Canada and the price is (again) slightly above my limit.

Also, if I could get something smaller than the IRiver and the I-pod, it'd be even better.

Though I get the feeling that I might have to revise either what I want or how much I'm prepared to pay for it. :p

Any other advice/recommendation is very welcome!

Kaethel

Well, I got a super-cheap discontinued 64meg display model a couple years back, so I can't really help you with personal experience. I can, however, suggest a couple of good websites.

Try going here. That's the epinions listing for MP3 players with at least 1 gig of storage capacity. From that page, you can further narrow it down by choosing a weight range (unfortunately, that's in ounces), a price range, or a manufacturer. Epinions offers product information along with reviews from fellow consumers.

You can also try cnet 's professional reviews of mp3 players for more information.

As for battery power, some MP3 players use standard size batteries (AA or AAA), so you have the option of finding cheap spares. You can get rechargable batteries, regular batteries, or both. If you're looking for long usage time, that's probably your best option. Get the rechargables for regular use, but take some extra non-rechargables along for those long trips.

Hope this helps.

Paul

I'd just second Wendy's recommendation of iRivers. I don't have one with nearly so large a hard drive (too much money!), but I've had absolutely no trouble with my smaller model. And mine runs on regular (or rechargeable) AA batteries, which means its always easy to pick up new ones if I run out.

As for adapting it to work in your car, unless you can plug it into an auxiliary slot as Wendy says, there isn't any way to run your player through a CD stereo system. You can't plug it into the CD player itself the way you would a tape player. THe only option I can think of is to get one of those small radio transmitters. You plug them into your mp3 player and it transmits the sound on a radio frequency. Then you just tune your car radio to that frequency. I don't have any experience with these, though, so I can't tell you how well they work.

Kaylle

Oh, I'd definitely recommend any iPod, there are various ones in the same price-range of Wendy's mentioned iRiver. I haven't used that iRiver myself but a colleague at work seems very satisfied with it.

Personally, I use the iPod Photo in the 30gb variation with the Flashcard-Addon. This way my digital camera never runs out of storage space The Apple software should probably get a honorable mention too, my previous mp3-player was some cheap thing with even worse software, I was pretty dissatisfied.

Back again, Kae - the IHP-100 series has been superseded, I see. There are 20GB and 40GB versions in the new range - given the price of the 40GB, the 20 is probably better for you to look at. The new iRiver is the H320 Lite 20GB MP3 Player with Tuner

Here's the Amazon.co.uk product page and reviews .

There is also a very positive review in PC Pro magazine - that's a highly reputable UK computer magazine which John used to get every month - you'll have seen it lying around the house.

Incidentally, the page from the PC Pro website has links to all of its Labs reviews of MP3 players of similar type to the iRiver, so you can look at those and compare. You'll have to register to view more than one page, though.

Good luck!


Wendy

I really recommend the Creative line -- that's the company that made soundblaster cards for your desktops. They are technically first rate though not as good at marketing as Apple -- hence also a bit cheaper. The MUVO comes with an FM radio, it's really small and light and you can get it with various sizes of memory.
It ROCKS

Allie

Kae, I got Ken an ipod for Christmas and I swear, the man hasn't taken the earphones out of his ears since December! Really, he just loves it. It's very small (fits in a pocket and the ipod mini is even smaller), it stores up to 20 GB/5,000 songs, and his battery often lasts up to 10 hours.

It doesn't have the FM tuner, which he does wish for on occasion. But it offers a gazillion different ways to play the music back (playlists, top songs played, songs purchased, genre, random/party mix, etc.) And itunes is a real easy way to get songs straight from the internet.

There's my customer satisfaction report.

Lynn

I don't know too much about mp3 players, but thought I'd throw in my two cents. My sister has an iPod, which she dearly loves. I fiddled around with it once or twice... I think it'd take a little bit to get used to how to navigate through the songs. *shrug*

Anyway, the main reason I'm bothering to post is that my sister bought an adapter of some sort that she plugs into the iPod and it allows her to play her songs through a radio station in her car. I imagine most other mp3 players would have this accessory as well. So, as long as your car has a radio with that CD player, you should be okay.

Sara

I'll add to the list recommending ipods . I love my ipod, I use it pretty much everyday. If I ever need to listen to the radio I just use my mobile, I carry that with me everywhere I go anyway so it's not like it's something extra to carry.

Thanks for all your recommendations, guys. I spent the last couple of hours exploring the websites you sent me to (yes, Wendy, I remember PC Pro, and I registered to see their lab tests), and I realised that I'm gonna have to compromise. :p

Ideally, I'd like the size, weight, robustness and battery life of a flash player, combined with the features and storage capacity of a hard drive player. Since that's not going to happen, I have to revise my demands. :p

I checked I-pods, and they looked really good... until I read several (many, even) reviews saying they were not compatible with WMA, and considering 90% of my MP3s are WMA files, it'd be a pain to re-rip everything from scratch.

The Iriver IHP 320 seems really, really good as far as features are concerned, but it's a bit bulkier than what I'm looking for, especially as I want to use my MP3 player to commute to and from work as well as go on long journey. So I'd really like something that fit in my jeans pocket. It's still one of my likeliest choices if I can't get a flash player that has the same kind of features.

I've looked into flash players, and Creative Line and Cowon seem to have some large capacity ones (Cowon even goes up to 2 Gb, which is the biggest capacity for a flash player), but many review sites explain that hard drive players are really, really much better in the long run.

In fact, I'd found *the* perfect flash player: the Iriver ifp 999 looked like the best compromise, PC Pro is raving about it, and there are a huge majority of excellent reviews on Cnet. But then I found several really, really negative reviews explaining that the player skips when playing WMA files and that it doesn't work as a USB mass storage (which totally contradicts what PC Pro is saying - talk about confusing!)

Microdrives seem to be a good compromise, so I have to look into that.

Thanks again for all your help!

Kaethel

Okay, here's my revised spec.

Must-haves:
- a feature that allows me to create and modify playlists *from the player* (without having to hook into a computer) and repeat them indefinitely.
- an easy and fast transfer to and from a Windows XP computer.
- no skipping sound when listening to certain types of file.
- a 1 Gig minimum storage capacity
- a radio tuner (with possibility to save favourite stations)
- a more than 15 hours battery that works interchangeably with AA or rechargeable battery, and possibility to recharge *without* having a laptop around.
- Small, light and robust.

Would really rather it had (but would be ready to compromise):
- WMA Compatibility.
- Possibility to play in a car in the way Kaylle mentioned.
- A 10 Gig storage capacity with possibility to download pictures from my digital camera when I have no computer around.

Not really necessary:
- direct USB plug (if it needs a USB cable, I'm not too bothered)
- Radio and voice recorder (I wouldn't use that kind of feature)
- Direct recording from a CD player (again, not a feature I'd use)

Finally, and since websites make such a fuss about the look of MP3 players, let me state that I really don't care whether it's red, blue, black or yellow with purple polka dots.

Kaethel

Hey Kaethel.

I don't know if you encoded these wma-files by yourself or if you bought them online. In case they're 'open', which means unprotected, the iTunes software offers a possibility to import WMA files and reencode them into AAC, which is directly supported by the iPod.

Half of them were encoded by me. The rest was not really bought, but more like downloaded for free from WinMX. Does that mean I need a DRM compatibility?

Also, a really important question comes to mind: are there players that can be recharged through a power socket without requiring a computer? That's rather important for the use I want to make.

Kaethel

Yep, I use some sort of power adapter with my iPod. But it's an addon, so add about 30 euro/us-d to the total costs.

edit: I know that there is also something for the car cigarette lighter and an additionary battery pack to use with customary batteries. Those are also addons because I don't have them

Again, I can only answer about iRivers, Kae - but they come with a power cord and you can also buy an adapter so that you can charge them through your car's cigarette lighter.

I don't know if the IHP320 is any bigger than the IHP140, but I don't consider that bulky at all. With the case which comes with it, you can hook it onto a belt or back pocket; easy to walk around wearing it, then.

Since you can't get precisely everything you want, you do need to think about what's most important. Is size/weight really more important than storage space? Some of those flash players really have very little space - you'd soon run out of room for all your favourites, I'd guess.

You asked about setting a track to repeat indefinitely - again, I don't know about the IHP320, but you could certainly listen to 'My Immortal' 20,000 times on the IHP140 if you wanted to! I think, actually, that apart from its size the IHP320 meets all your specifications. However, you have to decide lack of whether bulk is sufficiently important.


Wendy

That certainly weighs in the balance.

And you know me too well.

Kaethel (ready to beat the 11 hours record )

Since I'm trying not to study for my exam on Tuesday (because it's hopeless and I'm trying not to think about it <g>) I went looking at players. I didn't find anything that someone else ahsn't already said, but I did find some of the radio transmitters I mentioned. They vary by price and probably quality, if Amazon's reviews are to be believed , but almost all of them can be plugged into a standard headphone jack. So basically, anything you can plug headphones into can be used with a radio transmitter.

You can see a bunch of them at Amazon .

Good luck making a decision!
Kaylle

One option that has not been mentioned, and which doesn't meet all your specs -- but might be worth considering.

A Palm. My Tungsten E (just discontinued in favor of the E2, but still available new via 2nd party vendors) works surprisingly well as an mp3 player -- and still does all the things I actually bought it for.

Battery life is not even close to 15 hours -- I think about 1/2 to 2/3 of that? -- but it recharges easily with the included power cord. You need cards (they fit in the expansion slot) and Palm RealPlayer (a card and RP came free with mine, but that was a special bonus). But that essentially means unlimited storage space, with enough of those little cards.

Playlists are easy. The Palm has a (not very high power) speaker, as well as a phone jack.

The Tungsten E cost me $200 (-10% discount), and the new E2 is $250. Cards vary in price and size.

And my Palm holds lots and lots of fic . . .

Well, after spending the past few days exploring websites and weighing pros and cons, I finally went for the i-river H-340, which I found for a remarquably cheap price.

Thanks for all your advice, guys! It's been extremely helpful for me to make a decision.

Kaethel