Which portable mp3 player has the largest capacity?

April 6, 2008 7:48 PM

Which portable mp3 player has the largest capacity? I know the Ipod can hold 160 gigabytes, but I'm wondering if there are any bigger ones out there.
posted by Proginoskes to computers & internet (9 comments total)

That depends on what you mean by "mp3 player". There are very high capacity players that do video, audio, photos and such. The largest I'm aware of is the 250GB ESP from Wolverine. It's much more than an mp3 player -- and substantially larger than a simple mp3 player -- but it also has that larger capacity.
posted by The Bellman at 8:12 PM on April 6, 2008

You can pimp the 200/2001-era Archos mp3 players with a 2.5" laptop drive to 320GB (or 250GB if you want to avoid using a SATA/IDE converter), but you end up having to do gnarly things with the partitions because of the ancient controller firmware. It depends on what you call an "mp3" player - I'm guessing you count the video players as well because I think Apple's player also does video. Archos sells a few portable video player/recorders with 160GB as well - the ceiling for small devices like those a function of the largest currently widely available 1.8" drive on the market. You want something larger like 250GB out of the box you have to go for something like the Wolverine (which is a tank of a device).

I actually run Orb on my home server and with a 3G phone plan (I get around 1500-1800 Mbps with Sprint) or easy access to WiFi, you can turn any halfway decent phone or internet tablet (like the Nokias) into multi-TB video/audio players. With Apple's new 3G phones that will become reasonably more popular for ipod fans.
posted by meehawl at 8:12 PM on April 6, 2008

The Archos models also have SD memory slots I think, for an additional 8 GB boost (or whatever size flash card you put in there).

Gosh that wolverine is UGLY.
posted by wilful at 10:22 PM on April 6, 2008

What to do with all that capacity? Unless you want to store your music lossless, or you are one of those acquisition whores who has more music than you could ever hear, anything over about 60Gig is overkill. I have the 160. I don't think the other big mp3 players can best it yet, especially when you take into account ease of use etc.
posted by caddis at 1:30 AM on April 7, 2008

Until Bill started wrting his operating systems in C instead of assembly language they basically didn't, although it was still nice to grab another 128K or so. My comments relate to the lifetime of the mp3 player anyway and assume mp3s etc. If you are storing lossless, storing video, etc. then all bets are off.

The big players like the 160 are pretty cool because you can put everything you own possess on them. However, I also have a Nano and probably use it more often as it is so small and light that you can take it anywhere with no hassle, and it still holds an awful lot of music.
posted by caddis at 5:06 AM on April 7, 2008

I'm with proginoskes and jmnugent, my mp3 music collection is consistantly bigger than the available music players and it's all music I listen to. Throw video into the mix and save a bit of the drive for transferring data and those 160 gb players look pretty cramped. Double that and we can start talking. Fortunately now that ipod sizes have started doubling pretty regularly it's not going to be a problem for more than 18 months. Not even I can double my entire lives collection in a year and a half.

I think the cheapest/simplest way at the moment is to have 2 players. (I don't though)
posted by merocet at 5:48 AM on April 7, 2008

If you need to transport all your data around, buy a 500 gig (or more) IDE drive for peanuts and put it in a good enclosure. For an mp3 player you want flash memory, that means nano, and that means ~8 gig. I have over 300 gig music and 100 gig video, it's all about making good smart playlists on the iPod and keeping the external drive handy when you need to travel far.
posted by sophist at 8:14 AM on April 7, 2008

If there was a good smart playlist which could anticipate what I will want to listen to from my collection of music on any given day then that might be the way to go. Given that I change my mind about what I want to listen to on a daily basis between putting on my coat and closing the front door behind me, it better be a really really smartlist. Different people use their players differently and some of us need the space and the convenience.

I think you're stuck at 160 GB until the bigger capacity disks come through as they inevitably will for $100 less than the 160 GB version about a month after you've bought it ;-)
posted by merocet at 2:48 PM on April 7, 2008

I'm surprised re-reading this thread that so many people are lamenting that they have to prune carefully to cut down their playlists. I mentioned Orb but you can roll your own streaming media servers with VLC or Media Center. It's not really that difficult to do and you end up with basically unlimited choice. Highly recommended.
posted by meehawl at 8:07 PM on April 7, 2008