MP3 Player

[bravo 34]

I want a fairly budget mp3 player to rock a few portable tunes in the car and at parties.

The 8GB ipod Nano fits the bill in terms of what I want and budget, but being the bargain-hunter I am, I wonder what alternatives are out there at this price point???

The 8GB Nano is $230 retail. Anyone using anything else that they'd recommend over the ipod??

PS for me to pick something over the ipod it would have to be cheaper.

PPS I tried a couple of Sony walkman mp3 players at the Sony store yesterday. I hated the interface, so anything Sony is out.

PPPS Yes I know - I'm rather late in joining the ipod generation.

[mrad01 0]

I want a fairly budget mp3 player to rock a few portable tunes in the car and at parties.

The 8GB ipod Nano fits the bill in terms of what I want and budget, but being the bargain-hunter I am, I wonder what alternatives are out there at this price point???

The 8GB Nano is $230 retail. Anyone using anything else that they'd recommend over the ipod??

PS for me to pick something over the ipod it would have to be cheaper.

PPS I tried a couple of Sony walkman mp3 players at the Sony store yesterday. I hated the interface, so anything Sony is out.

PPPS Yes I know - I'm rather late in joining the ipod generation.

Is there any other player in the market?

I tried "saving money" in the early years - and ended up buying an iPod anyway...

If you thought the Sony interface was bad - the others are not much better. I'm absolutely sure you can get "cheaper product" - but if it is a pain in the arse to use (like most are) - you will wish you got the iPod. Like a BMW, you pay a little bit more for a well thought out product.

iPod FTW!

Edited June 29, 2009 by mrad01

[OLLIE 26]

^ + 1

[AzonicNick 0]

Plus another one for the ipod, cant really beat them for a mp3 player.

Everybody knows how to use them too

[bekker 7]

Yip iPod here. You would have to do some trial and error to find alternatives. So you might as well start where you will probably end up anyway. Classic is the one to go for.

[martyyn 2]

If your worried about the price G, just pick one up off trademe. I got a 30gb video in 'reasonable' nick for $100 not so long ago and because its already got its fair share of scratches on the back it gets thrown about everywhere and I couldnt care less.

[DRTDVL 0]

I've got a creative vision:m 30gb with my senhieser headphones it sounds better than the iphone i've got...

Would recommend to anyone - has a few advantages over the ipod/itouch.

-Windows recognises it as a portable device and doesn't need itunes to work (good for work environments where your not allowed to install software)

-It's not a ipod

-can be used as a portable harddrive with no app's required.

there are a few others but it's not an ipod... and in nz where ipods dominate the market getting things like extra chargers for the car, socket plugin charges, etc.. can be a pain as you can't just rock up to dicksmith, jaycar, etc... and get cables/chargers...

Also all new car stereo's, home stereos, etc... have ipod stands to allow direct connection to the device - it's worth noting that 99% of these don't interface with the iphone also... just the ipods/itouches...

As much i as i hate the ipod/iphone i would recommend getting one in NZ, purely for the fact things would be easier to get for it. Also have a good look what you want to use it for... 8gb gets fulled very very quickly... it doesn't take long before you start getting sick of the same songs constantly...

i'd highly recommend getting something atleast 16gb pref 32gb...

[bmw_guy 0]

I hate ipods,

Have been through so many, although i do understand the newer ones are not to bad. You pay so much for so little when an MP3 does exactly the same job, with less effort (no itunes)

Go mp3, creatives are good from what i have heard. Samsungs are ok to.

[Apex 693]

I-Pod. Mac just make things easy.

As Heath said, accessories can be expensive.

If it’s for use in the car why not just burn off a few MP3 disks.

[greenday-rulz21 5]

iPod full stop

I had a mini 4gb, then upgraded to a Classic 80gb then up to a Classic 120gb. All very good, none broke.

My bit of advice for what its worth. Get a decent sized one, I've got many mates which have bought 4-8gb nano's and fill it up extremely fast and regret not getting a classic.

For the extra cash its definitely worth the extra storage.

[Apex 693]

x2 have a 80gb Classic and its great, dont have to keep clearing stuff out to make room.

[pjay 8]

Just go straight to an ipod.

I've had the same 2 gig ipod for years, never broken on me. Wouldnt mind more space, but meh. Does the trick

[*Glenn* 854]

I have an 80g Ipod & Idrive... luv it... just dial it in to an unused frequency and tune it in on the radio, sterio or home theatre

I use 104.10 from memory

Edited June 30, 2009 by *Glenn*

[Guest Simon*]

iPod full stop

I had a mini 4gb, then upgraded to a Classic 80gb then up to a Classic 120gb. All very good, none broke.

For the extra cash its definitely worth the extra storage.

x2 have a 80gb Classic and its great, dont have to keep clearing stuff out to make room.

These are good and pretty simple. I have an 80Gb Video which is essentially the same thing and you can pick them up very cheap on TM secondhand. I'm on my second one. I have found the HDD ones all pretty easy to fix too.

I resisted ipods for ages and looked at the alternatives but in the end they get you

I have over 30Gb of music on mine, pretty much all my photos, both seasons of the Conchords and a swag of movies. Pretty handy gadget all in all. And if you're really opposed to itunes you can use a simple app like sharepod to drag and drop via windows.

[Driftit 1968]

Family has had 8 ipods in the last 5 years. All have sh*t out. Will never purchase anything Apple again due to the horrendous experience with their products and service int he UK and NZ.

But unfortunately since the last one died I have not purchased another MP3 player. Just commenting to show that Ipods are not always great.

Take time to learn another interface and it will become as easy as the Ipuds one.

Edited June 30, 2009 by driftit

[Mike 1]

Question: Do you have to use iTunes with ipods? I'd consider one if you didn't. I've seen a few break but that fact that theres is so many accessories for them makes them pretty hard to resist in NZ.

IMO go for the big storage too, smaller ones just get annoying if you listening to it quite often. (doesnt take long to chew through music when driving). If its just for piss-ups 8gb would be ok

Edited June 30, 2009 by Mike

[Wom 0]

http://www.ascent.co.nz/productspecificati...x?ItemID=357400

same website (wgtn based) also has heaps of accessories if you're worried about that sort of stuff

[DRTDVL 0]

I"ve got Andrea the Creative Neeon 6gb (nice and small for the gym) and i've got the creative vision m as stated before, if you looking for a ipod replacement i would seriously look at the creative vision:m stuff or some of the iriver gear.

if your really into your photos, the iriver my friend has will allow you to plug your camera into the iriver and user it as a storage device allowing you to empty your memory cards onto it... it's a direct plug in from the camera to the iriver via a usb cable

[bravo 34]

Thanks guys. Am definitely buying new, so that makes a classic out of the budget.

mp3 CD's are half the problem. I have 3 CD cases in my car. I want to clear them out.

iTunes has got to be the best reason NOT to get an ipod.

What file formats will an ipod play?

[mrad01 0]

Thanks guys. Am definitely buying new, so that makes a classic out of the budget.

mp3 CD's are half the problem. I have 3 CD cases in my car. I want to clear them out.

iTunes has got to be the best reason NOT to get an ipod.

What file formats will an ipod play?

I don't think I understand the anti-iTunes talk here? WTF?

Is it a bit of tall poppy or is there actually a reason?

iPods play AAC, MP3, Lossless, AIFF and WAV. MP3 covers it all really...

[DRTDVL 0]

I don't think I understand the anti-iTunes talk here? WTF?

i really don't like the way itunes is soo invasive removing alot of the controls you have over the files when compaired to something like media player. 

Espically if you have an old mp3 collection where the tags aren't correct, i've got about 140gb of music at home i really really don't want to have go through and correct the tag information for 50gb of my music thats got the incorrect information in the tags. 

I also hate how the ipod/iphone/itouch renames all the fricken mp3's to random numbers/letters to try and prevent sharing, a few friends have had their pc's hdd die and the ipod was the only collection of songs they had left... it was a pain to rebuild the lib. 

If it had been my creative mp3 player it would have been a simple drag and drop to get everything back again. Not a hunt for some software to read the ipod database and attempt to convert all the files back to their actual file name. 

[bravo 34]

I want drag and drop without having to install a rather large behemoth piece of software being installed that seems to want to download large updates every 2 minutes.

I have a media player that I like (VLC for video and WMP for music playback/internet radio/music library), so I don't want to use iTunes for that, all I want is to drag and drop my existing music onto the ipod. Why can't Apple make it optional? It smacks of bundling IE with Windows, etc.

But from what I can gather, there are workarounds, so its not a big deal.

It looks as though I'll get the nano. Sure 8GB may fill up faster than I think (esp since I've been encoding my mp3's at 320kbs since large HDD's have become common), but I want to buy new, and I want something cheap enough so that if I lose it, I won't be too pissed off, and at $230 for the 8gb nano, that fits the bill.

At 320kbs it should be about 60hours of music.

So maybe I could just re-rip at 256kbs which is probably way better than my bad ears care about anyway, and then I'd get closer to 70 hours.

[DRTDVL 0]

you can use winamp to put music onto the ipod/itouch

[antil33t 90]

I have an iPod, well Two infact...

One runs Rockbox very nice peice of open source firmware, allows you to drag/drop music however you like, and it looks different and confuses people

the other iPod

has a sad life. (the screen is cracked)

But yeah, iTunes is the biggest issue with iPods.

[bravo 34]

And I just found out that the firmware updates are deployed via itunes. So that kind of seals the deal doesn't it??? I would have thought Apple were smart enough to realise that the majority of its customers want CHOICE. Part of the reason they like Macs.