MP3 players. Your opinions please.

[Ares_God_of_War]

I am looking for a portable MP3 player. I am looking for something durable and not too expensive. I would like the ability to randomize the music as well as play specific songs. any recommendations please :)

[lugaru]

This thing has treated me extremely well:

http://www.theconnoisseurs.com/cowond2.html

I've gotten it wet, dropped it and it keeps ticking. Also I bricked it once by accident and the company fixed it no questions asked. It lasts for 40 hours on a charge, does the best video in the market and not only can you play random or folders of songs but you can also create play lists.

Best of all it's not an i-pod. I've had to help my girlfriend with hers and talk about a constricting piece of junk.

[zuludelta]

The MPIO MG100 is good value for money.

It's dirt cheap, comes with an FM radio tuner, supports playlists, has voice-recording capabilities, and also plays video and displays .bmp and JPEG pics (although watching a movie or looking at a photo on a 1.5 square inch screen can strain your eyes some). I gave it to my brother as a gift and he has no complaints about it, other than needing a firmware update (free and can be done online) for it to work properly.

Some guy actually put a video of it on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26dQ7yPL2AU

[Ares_God_of_War]

Both look interesting. ZD I cannot find any info on where to purchase that particular item or the price range. I live in Utah so about the onlything we have is circuit city and best buy now that compusa went out of buisness.

[GhostMachine]

I got a SanDisk Sansa m240 for my birthday last year. It holds 1gb of songs and I believe it costs around $40 to $50 bucks. Mine came from Circuit City. The only thing I don't like is that it comes with earbuds, and I have trouble getting an earbud to stay in my right ear, so I replaced it with some fairly cheap Maxell earplug style headphones I got at Wal-Mart (they make a model that has the band over your head and another that has it behind your neck; I went with the latter).

[zuludelta]

Both look interesting. ZD I cannot find any info on where to purchase that particular item or the price range. I live in Utah so about the onlything we have is circuit city and best buy now that compusa went out of buisness.

I bought the MG100 at a Future Shop (the Canadian affiliate of Best Buy), so maybe your local Best Buy might carry them. IIRC, it cost about $80 two years ago, so it probably costs somewhere in the $40 to $60 range now.

EDIT: By the way, I second Ghostmachine's recommendation for the Sandisk m200 series (I have the 2 GB model)... they're cheap, and use a single AAA battery, which makes it very convenient (I use rechargeable AAAs so I don't have to keep buying batteries... also, I can carry multiple batteries with me so I don't have to worry about running out of juice in the middle of a workout or on my commute). The only thing is they don't support .m3u playlists (although I think they support Windows Media Player 10 playlists and there are also a couple of user-written utilities that ill allow playlist creation), and have no function that allows for random track play.

[bredon7777]

3d recommendation for Sansa. I have a 2gb Fuze, and I love it. $80 at Walmart- great sound quality, snug earbuds and most important- no crazy software to install..just plug it in and drag and drop your songs to it.

Only drawbacks are a small learning curve, and the difficulty of finding accessories for it- I've been looking for an armband for it since I got it, but all the stores only seem to carry IPod acessory.

[Ares_God_of_War]

thanks for the help on that. I went to Best Buy for the Sansa but I ended up getting http://www.insignia-products.com/pc-289-22-insignia-pilot-8gb-video-mp3-player-with-bluetooth-technology.aspx instead. It was only about $10 on sale and its 8 gig so that should last me a good long while

[detourne_me]

$10 on sale?? wow!
i use a 3rdgeneration 4gb ipod nano myself - it was cheap, about $150 a month or two after it came out on the market, and i haven't had any problems whatsoever with it.  the battery lasts a long time  .. i find myself plugging it in more often the update podcasts then to charge it... so its usually charged anyways
i'm also making the switch away from itunes to songbird www.songbirdnest.com and so far theres been nearly perfect compatibility (just need to point my library to my itunes library, then synch em up)

[Ares_God_of_War]

 :banghead: lol that was supposed to read "$10 differance on sale" but I was tired