MP3 player

September 18, 2005 6:19 PM

MP3 player recommendations that meet specific requirements?

I know there have been many MP3 player suggestions on Ask.mefi but I have some very specific requirements 1) Must have an FM tuner 2) must work with WINXP without a USB 2.0 port (only USB 1ish), Firewire would be OK as well 3) Must be sturdy enough to handle jogging well 4) The bigger the hard drive the better, as one of the things that has made me hate my minidisc player was constantly making new discs, though I am open to all sizes.

I'd also appreciate personal reasons why you think one brand is exceptionally good or bad.

posted by drezdn to media & arts (10 comments total)

I really like my iRiver ihp-120, which I think meets all your requirements. It mounts as a removable drive and does not require proprietary software to access. It supports multiple formats, including .ogg. However, the interface of the player itself is not that intuitive--you can't beat the ipod for interface simplicity. One caveat: no hard-drive-based player is sturdy enough for jogging. The shock and vibration will inevitably cause damage to the moving drive mechanism. If you plan on using the player primarily while running, you really should consider a flash-based player.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 6:30 PM on September 18, 2005

i use a creative muvo TX FM 1GB player for my gym activity. have been quite happy and i believe it meets all of your criteria except large HD. But as monju said HD players are not good enough for jogging and Nano is probably one of the larger flash players around. Things I like about Muvo - takes regular AAA battery, flat design unlike my MobiBlu, feels rugged and has a nice clipon attachment, PC sees it as a disk drive. No extra dongle needed.

I am not so hot about its FM reception. But then again I do not listen to FM much. Display is so so. But when I am in gym or driving, i dont have chance to look at the display much. Does handle tagging. But I dont need that for this. It is Fit for Purpose player for me.

My fun unit will probably be an Archos AV500 someday. I used to own a 20G Archos before. But it is dead now.
posted by flyby22 at 6:42 PM on September 18, 2005

Sorry I meant it DOES NOT handle tagging
posted by flyby22 at 6:43 PM on September 18, 2005

Iriver, definitely. I have a slightly older ihp-140 and have loved it from day 1. and it seems to fit your requirements (the bigger sizes come in 20 and 40 gigs)
posted by edgeways at 6:59 PM on September 18, 2005

I'm currently trying to find an excuse to get an iAudio X5, and I think it meets all your requirements (available in 20GB, 30GB and a 60GB is coming out next month, there's also the X5L, which has a 30 hour battery life, but won't be available in the 60GB version as far as I know). Currently, it doesn't support ID3 file tagging (not a problem if you use filetree), but support for this is coming in a firmware upgrade soon. Well-made, sounds great (it's a common audiophile choice), very customizable.
posted by biscotti at 7:15 PM on September 18, 2005

Also, just in case you are not aware of it, head over to Dap Review for lot of useful info.
posted by flyby22 at 7:37 PM on September 18, 2005

http://dapreview.net
posted by flyby22 at 7:38 PM on September 18, 2005

I just recently purchased a 1GB Sony NW-E507, and it's wonderful.

It's small, sexy, and the controls are exceptionally easy to use while not looking at the device (good for jogging) and it's flash memory, so it's not going to break through the impact of jogging.

It's fine with USB 1, and the FM tuner gets very good reception. I originally wanted something with more storage, but really, 1 GB is plenty for a couple of day's worth of listening.

Oh, it also has rather amazing battery life, they reckon 50 hours off one charge (and it charges through the USB cable!). Amazing for something the size of a cigarette lighter.
posted by tomble at 7:57 PM on September 18, 2005

I have one of the current gen iRiver H10 models (the 20 gig). It's great but

1)No .ogg support in this generation of players, which was kind of a disappointment as that's what had interested me in the iRiver players in the first place(the Rockbox independent firmware people are supposedly looking into it, but I think that's still in very early days). Are there any currently produced HDD players that do .ogg now that the Rio Karma is out of production? Toshiba or somebody does a lil flash player I think, but that seems to be all I can find...

2) Still no gapless MP3 play, which sucks if you like to listen to albums with tracks that feed into each other without ripping the album as a couple big tracks. Supposedly has shorter gaps than the iPod though, but they're still very noticable even with high bitrate and LAME encoded files.

3) Battery life is a bit short if you're listening to bitrates above 128 kbs on a regular basis. Maybe 8-10 hours. Not terrible, and it recharges quickly.

Has an FM tuner, and works with USB 1. Also works as a voice recorder. It supposedly needs Windows Media Player 10, but it also mounts as a drive that you can just add files to. In fact, I had some stuff that WMP wouldn't acknowledge as proper files that I was able to copy and paste from my harddrive and they play just fine.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 10:26 PM on September 18, 2005

I love the H120 that I have, but I've found it can have real problems with USB1.1. It sometimes times out, and corrupts the filesystem. It's fairly easy to recover, though.
posted by scruss at 6:25 AM on September 19, 2005