Endless Paradigm

Well it's coming up to Christmas once again. 42 days according to eBay.

About a month back my MP3 player got 'borrowed'. It was a Sony NWZ-S639F 16GB and was pretty good. It sounded nice and had an awesome battery but the lack of SD/MS card slot was a little annoying. 16GB may seem a lot but when you have a lot of music and some movies space gets tight pretty quick.

So, I'm in the market for a new MP3 player. So far I have in mind:

Another Sony NWZ-S639F (Why can't Sony have nice, easy model numbers?):
Pros: Good sound and battery, reasonably cheap.
Cons: No expandable memory.

Cowon J3:
Pros: Good sound and battery, awesome screen, expandable memory.
Cons: Touchscreen, Pricy.

Creative Zen:
Pros: Decent sound and battery, expandable memory, cheap.
Cons: External memory not integrated into library, no dedicated volume control.

Sandisk Sansa Fuze:
Pros: Cheap, good battery, expandable memory, RUNS ROCKBOX.
Cons: Screen is meh.

I'm looking to spend around £100 but can stretch if I need to; the Cowon being an example of that. I'm open to second user players. Ipod's are not a consideration.

What do people think of these or can you suggest any alternatives?

Thank  you EP. I will love you all eternally and unconditionally.

you're telling me. my 4GB iPod Nano is feeling a little small now so I'm interested in what peoples say (I haz no interest in phones!)

Couldn't care about the screen, I'll be listening to the music so as long as it's UI makes sense that's enough.

So the Zen or Fuze..

Edit: Bargain 8GB Fuze with expandability http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B002NX0ME6/, 16GB cards for 16GBP.. http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B001F7AJKI/

By the looks of things unless i can get a good deal on the Cowon I'll probably end up getting the Fuze. The Fuze comes over the Zen simply because it'll run Rockbox.

If you want a little mopre fun from your iPod stick Rockbox on it and have a fiddle. Improves battery life and sound quality as well as being generally awesome.

PSPkiller Wrote: [ -> ]If you want a little mopre fun from your iPod stick Rockbox on it and have a fiddle. Improves battery life and sound quality as well as being generally awesome.

Is that even possible on a 3rd-Gen Nano :/ [edited my above post]

Senseito7 Wrote: [ -> ]

PSPkiller Wrote: [ -> ]If you want a little mopre fun from your iPod stick Rockbox on it and have a fiddle. Improves battery life and sound quality as well as being generally awesome.

Is that even possible on a 3rd-Gen Nano :/ [edited my above post]

Ah I see. Thought (for some reason) that you had a 2g. Probably because I have one now as my stop-gap MP3 player. Got it from a friend for a favour. Looking at it it's a miracle it still works.

Thanks for the links but you got the wrong one! That's the Clip+. It doesn't have a proper colour screen. The Fuze has a proper screen but it's quality isn't the best. Think passive matrix LCD's of the 90's. All desaturated and ghosty.

PSPkiller Wrote: [ -> ]Thanks for the links but you got the wrong one! That's the Clip+. It doesn't have a proper colour screen. The Fuze has a proper screen but it's quality isn't the best. Think passive matrix LCD's of the 90's. All desaturated and ghosty.

It was merely a suggestion as I found it particularly interesting. I'm interested in it because I have no interest in a full colour screen ^^'

Hmm, seems to have a short lifespan though http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Sansa-Clip...19OX6GM48T

Guess a bit more for a little more quality will be enough. /searches

I think there'll always be someone which manages to continually break things or whatnot.  I don't hear Sansa Clips mass-dying or the likes, so I'd probably only slightly consider the review.

I dunno, this is just from my experience.  I've bought products where heaps of people having issues, and I've never had them myself (most recently, a high speed USB stick advertised with 25MB/sec writes, with a bunch of people claiming they only get ~12MB/sec writes; I get around 25MB/sec writes myself on the drive, so I dunno...)

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote: [ -> ]I dunno, this is just from my experience.  I've bought products where heaps of people having issues, and I've never had them myself (most recently, a high speed USB stick advertised with 25MB/sec writes, with a bunch of people claiming they only get ~12MB/sec writes; I get around 25MB/sec writes myself on the drive, so I dunno...)

How much do you bet the 12MB/s writes comes from trying to read and write off the same USB...  12 from read + 12 from write = 24MB/sec

I believe they were ATTO benchmarks, so unlikely I'd say.