Bend Weekly Community Forums

[Peter]

I need some suggestions for an MP3 player for my wife. I LOVE my 60GB video iPod, but she wanted something that doesn't reencode into some other format like iTunes does so she could just dump her MP3s and go.

So... I bought the Creative Zen Micro as it got a lot of good reviews. Well, the interface pales in comparison to the iPod but that's expected and easy for her to get over. However, even after firmware upgrades the dang thing gives error messages and occasionally freezes.

I'm returning the Creative and must get something else because I see that others are having these issues and can't be bothered beta testing units until we get a good one.

Anybody have any good suggestions in the $200-250 street price range?

[Packrat]

id hate to say it but stick with Ipod. just cause it changes the format is not that big of a deal. just get a program that will change the format of all your mp3 files and it will be fine. there are not many mp3 players i would really recomend cause there more than likely a no name brand and not usually that great.

If you want to look for something else id say check ebay, thats the only sugestion i can think of for you.
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I dont wanna grow up im a toys r us kid.....

[Medium]

iPod might be worth convincing your wife about, since many of the other companies' products are not as good. I was about to say that the Rio products were looking good at one point but they seem to be out of business? My, how things change so quickly in technology, but Apple is probably going to be around for a while

[brent4745]

For my opinion, I would look into iAudio mp3 players. I have the iAudio 5 512 mb and I'm content with my purchase.

Just for informational purposes I'll show why I think iAudio is the way to go if your looking to purchase an mp3 player.

1. Every mp3 player supports mp3/wma/asf/wav/ogg codecs (btw ogg codec is the ogg vorbis codec which puts the mp3 codec to shame. If you want to look into it, here's a link www.vorbis.com.

2. You can use the mp3 player as a flash drive in which shows as an actual drive in My Computer whenever you hook up the mp3 player to your computer. There's no software needed to have to communicate between your mp3 player and the computer. For me I use my mp3 player to transfer my essays and projects to school, so I can use their printers all on my mp3 player.

3. The amount of features that comes with the iAudio player (depending on which one you pick) have all the eye candy, customizations, and gadgets an audio enthusiast, like myself, all require out of an mp3 player.

4. The mp3 players are very affordable. I payed only $123 for my 512mb iAudio 5 mp3 player and I have been happy ever since. I tried the Creative Muvo 256mb which was a piece of garbage on the construction of the battery cardridge and the memory stick. (the connection with the usb always failed)

5. Also iAudio stands behind their products 100%. Also they update their firmware constantly. I was impressed myself on how many revisions of the firmware for the iAudio 5 even though the mp3 player is one of the lower level mp3 players they make available.

To my opinion, iPod and Apple are trying way to hard, but the versatility on only being able to use it to listen to music/movies/view pictures and not an actual external hard drive really shows.