cheap mp3 players?

[Embroglio]

can anyone recommend any good and cheap mp3 players? i'm looking to get one for someone's christmas and can prolly borrow upto 150 quid for one, the only one's i've found for that only have like 2gb hd's.

is there anything better than that?

[Kurashima]

I just got a 30gb Creative Zen Xtra. £170

Works for me!

[SilverSmoke]

Originally Posted by Kurashima

I've got a 30gb Creative Zen Xtra for about 225 euro (if I remember well)

Works for me!

[Blastoderm]

You can....

Originally Posted by Kurashima

I just got a 30gb Creative Zen Xtra. £170

Works for me!

OR you can get a Sony Minidisc player. Only £100. Unfortunately stores about 170mb on each disc.

[SilverSmoke]

Why on earth would someone do something foolish like that?

[Blastoderm]

In case he's that poor.

[Deathjam|wee]

i thought mini dics where more or less a dead format now??

[SilverSmoke]

I would by a normal mp3 reading cd player anyway over that minidisc shit.

[Blastoderm]

What is/was wrong with the minidisc?

[pig]

well u cud pick up an ipod mini on ebay from 100-150 pounds i think, or 179.99 retail in shops, its 4mb memory

[SilverSmoke]

4mb is rather crap dude

[Blastoderm]

4mb is really, really, really, really (you get my drift), really crap.

SS, you haven't answered my question...

[SilverSmoke]

170mb vs 700mb

[Blastoderm]

Small music player vs Brick music player

[Obliterate]

He means 4gb

Minidiscs are becoming a dead format because there isn't really that much difference between them and CD's. mp3 players are better because you don't have to carry CD's / mindiscs around with you anyway.

[SilverSmoke]

Originally Posted by Blastoderm

Small music player vs Brick music player

My brick fits perfectly in a pocket of my jacket, even during summer I can easily put in in one of the backpockets of my jeans which looks rather cool and trendy!

[SilverSmoke]

Originally Posted by Obliterate

He means 4gb

Yeah I know, I just thought let's bring in some of the funnies!

[MrL_JaKiri]

You can (and do) get shock protected CD players.

And CD's cost about 10p each IF THAT.

[pig]

Originally Posted by Flavius

except they're protected from shocks and you can write to them more than once?

many dj's and music people swear by their minidiscs

im a minidisc man but im tempted by an ipod...

[macros69]

Originally Posted by SilverSmoke

I would by a normal mp3 reading cd player anyway over that minidisc shit.

y ?? md's now a days have lp4 and can contain 4x80 mins which is like 240 mins. seing as you can buy a net md for about £90 and 10 mds cost like £3 then y not make this the poor mans option to an mp3 player seeing as you can put mp3s on it like it was an mp3 player. I personnally have just upgraded to the creative zen media centre from ebay for like £300 i think maybe a bit more but then that plays videos aswell. Now that is a nice player

[jerome]

with regards to the topic, I got my creative zen for £160. 30gb also, http://www.microdirect.co.uk too lazy to get to the link closely, more worth it than going for a slightly cheaper but much worse capacity-wise mp3 player.

[the_dastardley_chihuahua]

i got the 30gb creative zen about 2/3 months ago for £160. it is excellent value for money. major ball ache ripping all my cds tho

[Stew]

iriver > ipod
iriver > ipod
iriver > ipod
iriver > ipod

[paolo]

Why would you want an mp3 player that has a battery for about 20hours and there is music on it for about 1000 hours?

[the_dastardley_chihuahua]

do you really need me to tell you the answer to that or do you just want to think about it a bit more?

[paolo]

be a nice guy and enlighten me

[the_dastardley_chihuahua]

the word for today is 'convenience'. it is highly convenient to be able to store all your music files on one medium, without having to fanny around with mini discs or hooking it up to a pc every time you want to change the playlist, especially if you are away from home for extended periods of time.

[paolo]

Do you have 30gb of music?

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by Flavius

the cd itself is protected

Explain to me then why one of my CD players has obvious shock protection and another one obviously doesn't.. Doesn't this render your argument invalid?

Originally Posted by some other guy

Why would you want an mp3 player that has a battery for about 20hours and there is music on it for about 1000 hours?

More battery life, more space and more versatility are not bad things.

If you don't fill your iRiver, what the hey! Use it as a portable harddrive.

Do you have 30gb of music?

Yes.

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by paolo

Do you have 30gb of music?

There's a lot of people here who have a lot more than that. But yeah, of course I do. I'd now find a player without at least 5GB of space a major inconvenience (the tracks of my favourite 4-5 bands probably are in excess of that).

On-topic : I got a Creative Zen Touch (20GB) for £200 about a month ago. I like it quite a lot. I'd imagine if you buy on-line you could get for £150-£170.

[JC]

http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Product...65&GroupID=380

I assume that is practically the same as the 30gb one myself and a few others (Kura etc) have. It is excellent and i would recommend it to anyone looking for an mp3 player that isnt overpriced like the IPOD.

[Dante Hicks]

Yeah that's the one I have, it's good and the battery life is the best for an MP3 player I've seen (good for morons like me who forget to recharge it).

[Stew]

I am disappointed by the lack of support for the iriver in this thread

[nick]

3rd generation ipod.

[XeeThot]

Ipods break their harddrive when they fall.

Flash memory gets corrupted with time.

I still prefer to have a player that has a storage device that I can change/swap when it gets defective and that won't cost me as much as a new player. Hence I'll be buying a Net MD from Sony.

[Nodrog]

Why not take advantage of the weak dollar and get yourself an iriver/ipod from ebay.com with proper storage capacity? A 20gig ipod only costs £155 from amazon.com, and I'm sure you could find one cheaper if you hunt around.

[Blastoderm]

Originally Posted by XeeThot

Flash memory gets corrupted with time.

I never knew that.

[Structural Integrity]

My blue RIO Volt has been serving me well over the past few years (CD MP3 player), yet I'm thinking about buying a decent HD MP3 Player.
Can the IPod play MP3's or is it limitted to that audio format from apple? And can I put data/music on it without that apple crap software (ie: use it as a mass-storage device)?

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by XeeThot

I still prefer to have a player that has a storage device that I can change/swap when it gets defective and that won't cost me as much as a new player.

Dropping the iPod breaks it, but then dropping most things break them.

[Phang]

i'm looking at getting a 5gb zen micro because it's cheap, very small and LOOKS AWESOME. however, the 20gb touch isn't much more, and has four times the hard drive. I have about 16 gigs of music and regularly listen to about 4 gigs of it. If i wanted to change music anyway it wouldn't be THAT tedious a procedure, but still..

[Weeks]

buy a second hand ipod.

[Phang]

Originally Posted by Flavius

Try this: get a CD, get a rough surface, scratch the underside of the cd against the surface.

now do the same with a minidisc


IS THIS CLEAR ENOUGH NOW ?

shock protection is so it doesn't skip when u jump around, and the lenses keep on reading ahead. basically its a buffer.

in other words, minidiscs are proofed against complete imbeciles better than their substantially cheaper CD counterparts?

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by Flavius

Try this: get a CD, get a rough surface, scratch the underside of the cd against the surface.

now do the same with a minidisc


IS THIS CLEAR ENOUGH NOW ?

I know what shock protection does. But maybe if you, in the original post, hadn't stated the exact opposite of what you just said ('The CD is protected') maybe this wouldn't have veered off on this tangent.

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by Flavius

and they can be written many times, rather than WORM media

in sum, minidiscs > cd's

However, cds are more versatile and cheaper than minidisks.

I buy CDs anyway, I have no need for minidisks.

[Structural Integrity]

Originally Posted by Flavius

and they can be written many times, rather than WORM media

in sum, minidiscs > cd's

I have rewritable CD's so that's a void argument.
The only advantage of a minidisk is its cartridge-like casing protecting it from damage and their size/capacity ratio (if what you said about them being able to hold 4 albums of CD music was true).

[MrL_JaKiri]

Frankly, with an mp3 cd player, you can hold a good 10+ albums anyway.

[Structural Integrity]

Originally Posted by MrL_JaKiri

Frankly, with an mp3 cd player, you can hold a good 10+ albums anyway.

I though Flav was referring to CD data rather than MP3. Oh well.

[Dante Hicks]

I don't really see the point / need for removable media. I have however many MP3s with redundant copies on various machines. Messing around with physical copies with minidiscs and similar seems a bit silly.

[Structural Integrity]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

I don't really see the point / need for removable media. I have however many MP3s with redundant copies on various machines. Messing around with physical copies with minidiscs and similar seems a bit silly.

Back in the days, when there were no MP3 players with harddisks, and players with flash memory costed a small fortune and only had 64MB of memory, this would have been a usefull discussion.

[Nodrog]

Originally Posted by MrL_JaKiri

Frankly, with an mp3 cd player, you can hold a good 10+ albums anyway.

You'd be lucky if you could hold a single CD album in your hands while carrying an mp3 cd player, due to it's weight and size.