# MP3 Players, Any Good???



## nathanellis (Feb 2, 2005)

MP3's are the new craze, but are they realy that good? Have you been having trouble? Do you need software for it? Well find it all out here!

http://www.mpmaneurope.com
http://search.ebay.co.uk/MP3-Player_W0QQfltZ9 (UK eBay Site)

  :up: ​


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## Jackiefrost9 (Jun 17, 2004)

I have a 256MB mp3 player, works fine. Tiny little thing, only need software to format it.


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## Acey76 (Feb 17, 2005)

I own a Twenty Gig Nomad And Its Great. I Have About 6670 Songs On it and the batteries last about 18 hours. decient toy but i should have waited because mines about the size of a personal cd player and now there about the size of a pack of cigs.On the average i cant tell the difference in sound quality in MP3s WMAs or cds


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## marioh (Jul 24, 2001)

I've owned the RCA Lyra 40GB Jukebox. And all I can say is this :

DO NOT BUY THIS POS [email protected]!#[email protected]#[email protected]#!!

When it worked, it was the best purchase I've made in many, many years. I practically loved the thing, as much as one could love an inanimate object. 
Then the system board on it died, 9 months after purchase (the product comes with a 6 month warranty). Upon disassembling the player, I found it to be poorly designed. The rechargeable battery was glued to the hard drive, pieces were soldered on...it reminded me of a piece of electronics from the 80's, not 2004/05 ! Luckily, the hard drive in the player was still good, and I promptly put the hard drive into a 2.5" to USB drive enclosure, and verified that all of my MP3's (all 20+GB of them) were still on the drive, and good. So, the player dying wasn't a complete loss, but still enough of a loss to really aggravate me.

So now I'm waiting for my new Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra 30GB player to arrive from newegg. I did some comparisons and reviewed hundreds of reviews, and decided to go with this particular player over the I-pod equivalent. One reason why I chose it was the huge price difference between the Zen and the I-pod equivalent. Another reason was the Zen's support for WMA's, which the I-pod doesn't support *(yes, I know the I-Pod will convert WMA's to some bizarre Apple AIEE file, but the converted sound file is always inferior in quality to the original). And since Creative Labs is certainly one of the top manufactureres of sound cards in the business, one would assume that they know everything that needs to be known regarding sound quality, and from the reviews that I've read, the sound quality of the Zen Xtra is superb. And finally, the rechargeable battery that comes with the Zen Xtra is a standard type of rechargeable battery that one can buy in a place like Radio Shack, and install themselves. You need to replace the battery in the I-Pod ? Prepare to send $100 and the I-Pod back to Apple so that they can replace the battery in the I-Pod. The only thing that's missing from the Zen Xtra that I had on my RCA Lyra was the ability of Windows to see the player as an external hard drive (the I-Pod also doesn't show up as an external hard drive IIRC). So, it looks like I'll be stuck using Creative's software to transfer MP3's and files (there is a software utility called NOTMAD that's made by a third party that I've read is superior to the Creative software, so I'll probably be looking to get that and use it instead of the Creative software).


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## jgjulio (Apr 15, 2004)

Me and my son both have Rio Karma's. We have had them since Christmas of 2003. Within a month of owning both, one had a hard drive crash. Rio replaced it immediately. Since then both have been used almost daily without a problem. 
These guys hold a lot of music and work great.
The ipods by far have the market cornered on style and sex appeal. The Rio's are not sexy but are versatile.
I gave my wife a 20gig Ipod this Christmas since she listens to books not music all the time. Ipods team up with Audible.com. She loves it! She has many books already stored on it and it has not even started to get full.
My opinion is that the hard drive versions of mp3 plays are more fragile and you have to be careful with them but they are so much more useful. The flash drive units can stand to be dropped and hit around much more but they are limited in memory.


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## Fyzbo (Feb 6, 2002)

I just got my SanDisk MP3 player. 256mb flash player that I picked up from amazon.com for $65 no shipping or tax. It includes a voice recorder and a radio and I'm really enjoying it. It runs off of one AAA battery which is supposed to last 10 hours. I opted for a flash memory one for a few reasons.
1. Long battery life
2. Not a rechargable battery so it's cheaper to replace(rechargable batteries tend to not hold a good charge after about a yeear of regular use.)
3. Extremely small
4. Much cheaper, I've found 128mb ones as low as $30
5. More durable. There are no moving parts so there are less things to break on it.
Mine connects to a cable, the one I bought for my best friend's birthday connects directly to a USB port so it doubles as a jumpdrive. I would recommend them.

Sidenote: The whole iPod craze is driving me nuts. I don't see what the whole fuss is about. They are very expensive and tend to break so you need to pay extra for a warranty. The iPod shuffle is flash memory based, but it's larger and has less features then models made by other brands. iPod's also require iTunes so you can't just drag and drop your files easily you need their annoying software. So why is everyone going nuts about the iPod?


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## T-Bone (Oct 2, 2000)

I recently bought a Creative MuVo N200 and I love it (so far). It's a flash-based player that holds 1GB of songs, has an FM tuner, and can encode MP3's from a line-in source and store them on the player. The player is about the size of a zippo lighter! It also comes with a decent pair of headphones and a sports clip and arm band. I also like the fact that the player shows up as another drive on my computer, so I can just drag and drop files onto it - no software required!

If it crashes on me, I'll be sure to amend this post. But cnet.com recommended this player over the iPod Shuffle.


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## jcroix2002 (Apr 22, 2003)

Fyzbo said:


> I just got my SanDisk MP3 player. 256mb flash player that I picked up from amazon.com for $65 no shipping or tax. It includes a voice recorder and a radio and I'm really enjoying it. It runs off of one AAA battery which is supposed to last 10 hours. I opted for a flash memory one for a few reasons.
> 1. Long battery life
> 2. Not a rechargable battery so it's cheaper to replace(rechargable batteries tend to not hold a good charge after about a yeear of regular use.)
> 3. Extremely small
> ...


I got the latest one with 1 gig.It's the flash memory and no moving parts that sold me. :up: Ipods are marketed well,but when yoiu really look into it,aren't really a good deal.
Give a hand to their marketing though....top notch.

jc2002


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## marioh (Jul 24, 2001)

Here's my quick pro/cons of the Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra 30GB, after a few days of use :

Pros:
Replaceable rechargeable battery with approximately 10 hours of battery life
Fantastic sound, and also really loud. This MP3 player sounds awesome in my car through the cassette adapter. I can turn the volume on the MP3 player low, and then use my car's stereo system and amp to produce crystal clear music at window shaking volumes. 
Supports windows media files.
Ability to transfer regular PC files to the MP3 player, and off to a PC (using supplied software)
Only $200 for 30GB.
Updates are available on the Creative website to the player's firmware, software, OS, and Windows drivers.
USB 2 capable
Plenty of playback options
Automatic volume levelling (must be setup first though prior to being functional)


Cons:
Not seen in Windows Explorer as another hard drive, you must use software in order to transfer files/MP3's between the player and PC.
Supplied software and drivers for the player need to be updated.
Though it didn't matter to me since my player is used primarily in the car and at home, the player came with really crappy earphones.
Player only has a headphone jack (no audio out jack).
Access to MP3's on the player is all via the ID3 tags, and not via filenames. Can be a problem for some people who have incomplete or empty ID3 tags for their MP3's.

All in all, I'm very satisfied with the Zen Xtra.........so far. If it doesn't die on me like my RCA Lyra Jukebox did after 8 months, I'll be even more satisfied. The music quality on this player is awesome, much, much better than the RCA Lyra. Music quality and dependability are my top two priorities for a MP3 player, and the Zen Xtra totally exceeded my expectations with the sound quality. The jury is still out on the dependability part though, since I've only owned it for a little less than a week now.


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## Souljah123 (Oct 18, 2004)

i got a Creative MuVo V200, it hold 1 gig and the sound is great, it's just a little hard to change songs, theres a little wheel thing that you have to turn and there are no cool looking LCD colours, maybe there is but i just got it i dont know...
something cool about this small MP3 player is that there is a equalizer, you can choose from Jazz, Pop, Rock and more, you can even make your own custom one.

Pros :
Easy to function ( excluding the changing song part )
Small ( Smaller than Half of a IPOD Mini )
FM Radio 
Recording
Cool Equalizer
Cheap
Sound is excellent
Easy USB drive ( pull it out and plug it in ur comp )
Good Looking
You can delete songs easily, just delete it, for me i just go to My Comp., Removal Media and i just delete the songs i dont want or add the songs i do want


Cons :
No Cool Lights ( Only blue )
Not to easy to find the song you wanna listen to ( bad scrolling wheel )


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