MP3 player recommendations

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My Creative Zen served me well for many years, but alas, it appears to have at last met its end. As a result, I'm in the market for a new mp3 player. Having used a few of them and known many people who have had them, I dislike iPods. I also dislike touch screens. I am not concerned about physical size, but I would like it to have a minimum of 25gb storage space. Cost-wise, less is better, and I would prefer not to spend more than $150, but will consider going up to $200.

I did love my Creative Zen, so I may go with a newer version of that, but it's a fairly large purchase and I've not kept up with the technology, so I thought I'd see if any of you might be able to offer some advice. Any thoughts are appreciated.

I love my Sandisk Sansa Fuze player. It's a relatively inexpensive no-BS device with great sound quality, and you can read/write to it just like a flash drive; no need to use the proprietary software.

When I last checked, they came in 4- and 8-GB sizes, but both have a micro-SD slot for greater storage capability. I currently have an 8GB card in my 4GB player, for a total of 12GB of solid-state storage. As larger capacity cards become less expensive, you could meet your 25GB minimum.

For the record, I prefer solid-state storage simply because my mp3 player lives in my car, which rides quite rough. A hard drive might not last long in that kind of service.

Good for you not jumping on the iWagon

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll look into it. I do like not having to use proprietary software and am entirely against putting iTunes on my computer. Having done a bit of looking around since posting this, I see that the storage space in mp3 players amazingly seems to have decreased since I bought my Zen some six+ years ago, so I amend my bare minimum storage requirement to 16gb + SD card compatibility.

Looking around, I saw that Creative made another mp3 player (the Creative Zen 32GB Portable Media Player) which appears to be exactly, 100% what I'm looking for...but that it's no longer available anywhere or being produced. Time to explore other brands.

I'll second the sansa fuze recommendation. I love my 8gb fuze...


I had a zen too. I liked it but it crapped out pretty quick and I lost a lot of music. The zen's quality was very disappointing.

Crapped out quickly, really? What kind of Zen did you have? Mine was essentially flawless (never caused me a single complaint) right up until it died today.

Sony walkman, biggest plus for the thing is battery life, it lasts a ridiculously long amount of time.

the cons: while not a big deal with shuffle enabled it'll play the very first song in your alphabetical playlist first(if your in the all songs folder, for individual artists and albums it changes to the alphabetical first for that one as well, unless you choose a song for it,, but if you skip past it, it will shuffle randomly like it should.

If for some reason you like to watch movies on your mp3 player, the Walkman doesn't go right out and say what format it supports, although after extensive searching I found the jodix freeware ipod video converter converts perfectly.

Besides those two little setbacks, the Walkman is great, and I really can't stress how good the battery life on the thing is.

I don't remember the model, but it actually crapped out twice. The first time was within the first two weeks... I was able to reset it with a paperclip (there's a tiny reset button on the side). The second time was about 6 months later and it died for good and all.

How are the controls on the Sansa Fuze? The touchpad looks pretty awkward.

I always used to get Creative Zens but I give my MP3 players to family members when I get a new one so I don't have those anymore. They were good to me though. Right now I have a Sony Walkman and the battery does last an incredible amount of time and I like that it's more simple than iPods and other music players of that sort. Also, I like the fact that they're like the Creative Zens in regard to being able to easily drag and drop music files in and out of its file folder when changing the music on it.

Mine has a rotary dial/4 way button and a "home" button to get you back to the main menu quickly.

I find the controls easy and intuitive.

Not that I endourse Apple and the headache that is iPod, but you can use Sharepod and avoid iTunes completely. Though you will still need to initialize a brand new iPod with iTunes before you can do that...

I'm very happy with my RCA Pearl, though it's only 2 gigs (plus MicroSD). I just delete albums I'm done listening to and throw on new stuff every now and then *shrugs*. Or, as the case is lately, delete radio serial episodes I'm done with.