MP3 Player recommendations

WillBuckingham
 February 28, 2009, 10:30 AM posted in General Discussion

Hi, folks,

I'm just about to put my old and creaky Sony Walkman MP3 player out of commission (goodbye SonicStage, and good riddance), and was wondering if anybody had any recommendations for something solid and not too costly that would work well as a replacement. The main use of the player will be for Chinesepod podcasts. If I had money to burn, I'd get an iTouch for PDF support. As I don't have money to burn, any relatively solid little machine would be good. Any Chinese poddies out there with recommendations for something I could pick up here in the UK?

Thanks,

Will

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bababardwan
 February 28, 2009, 11:25 AM

Will,

I can't speak for the UK obviously,but personally I reckon that the cheapest [and smallest] one you can find will do the trick.I find they're all reliable enough these days and the sound quality etc is fine.The only feature that I have found handy though,is a small screen so you can scroll through the lessons.The cheapest I have found here is $15AUD and it works fine but didn't have a screen.I recently bought one for $25AUD [about 10 pounds] with a small screen [and 2G memory] and it's going fine.If you buy it from a place where you can take it back if it is faulty then I don't think you can go too wrong at those prices[cf an ipod nano is just under $200AUD..is that still about 100 pounds?]

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pchenery
 February 28, 2009, 08:10 PM

One MP3 player that you should absolutely avoid is the Microsoft ZUNE.

I started with a smaller MP3 player with 2G memory, which was great value.

After a while, I wanted more memory and a bigger screen and so I bought a iPod Classic, which can store 20,000 lessons and has a memory as big as my computer hard drive !  It was well worth the extra money.

 

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WillBuckingham
 March 01, 2009, 02:46 PM

Thanks! It's always good to know what to avoid. I got so tired of faffing around with my Sony machine. I'll weigh up whether to go for cheap and cheerful, or something more capacious.

All the best,

Will

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sk_buff
 March 03, 2009, 05:19 AM

For listening in a train or airplane, I recommend a headphone with active noise cancellation. Just switch a button and background noise is gone, so you can lower the volume.

Useful ones are available for around 200 US$.

I made good experience with a Philips SHN9500