MP3 players....Hellllppppppppppppp

[onthetrain]

OK, I fancy treating myself to a new gadget, well putting it on my Santa list fow SWMBO to surprise me with.

Problem is I dont really know what I want.

Thought about an Ipod, Creative zen or sony.

It will mostly be used for music, but would be nice to be able to put a movie or two on it for travelling and it would be very nice if it could download & store photos whilst on dive trips...

Does such a beast exist.

What does the TD massive think???

Alan

[Hellenic Diver]

nokia n95

also has a 5mp camera, sat nav - and you can make phone calls on it....

[Phil Mauer]

Ipod 160gb!!

£210.00

[onthetrain]

come on you lot surely you can do better than this??

[DecoWarrior]

i think for ease of use you cant go wrong with the ipod, cracking bit of kit for the money wicked battery life and quite a good quality screen, it could probably be a bit larger thats all, i use mine every day and its never skipped a beat, well until some git nicked it but thats another story..,

the only thing i can say about the ipod is the headphones could be better, if you can upgrade the headphones to the sony ones they are absolutely mint and the bass sounds brill, its a shame the sony software is a bit naff and the player is also a bit poor, no screen no photos but brill headphones these are available separately.

the zen is a nice bit of kit but i have only played with it for a short while and had no long term experience of its use,

the only other option is an mp4 player like an archos, watch movies its a nice bit of kit and maybe worth considering plus i know you can geta housing for these and run it as a harddrive for an helemt cam....

[websters]

I have an ipod and its great. It works for me because i like to listen to high quality AAC files (similar to mp3).

However it is a bit of a pain in the a**e when it comes to video. You have to re encode most "free" video (cough cough).

For the money i would go with an archos player. THey are awesome. Plus they act as a video recorder (PVR) and allow you to record tele episodes to watch later!

My 2p.

Jim

[NeilB]

Bought my sons the Archos 460 some time ago as we fly about a lot on planes. They have enough battery life to play two full length films and several cds worth of music in one go. They can also be plugged into your satelite/TV and will act as a video recorder/video player.
Great bits of kit but not so small as an ipod.

[lloydwatkin]

I have a Sandisk eSansa e280 (8Gb) small and weighs nothing, although mine is primiarily for going running with. Will do videos, great sound quality (especailly with a pair of Seinheisser headphones). Will also act like a hard drive and you can put a memory card into the side of it to expand memory size.

One thing I will say abou the iPods is that a friend now wants one she can use for running and has been forced to buy another iPod or face the pain of having to convert her music back to a format that the 99.9% of other players out there use. Not a big fan of iTunes any more

[thehappychappy]

IPOD's are the undisputed king of music.

They work well, have a great interface, anybody can work them and you can get some pretty good video encoders for them however where they wipe the floor with all others is with accessories.

Everybody makes accessories for IPOD's and you get decent speakers, docking stations, remote controls, headphones, FM transmitters, AV Cables all designed to plug straight into the IPOD connectors.

I am not a great fan of Apple however for portable music & video the IPOD's do indeed rule the planet.

I've ripped and converted plenty of DVD's and downloaded video to my IPOD.


Davie.

[Olle]

I want a Creative Zen.
Does almost any format (Unlike the iPod) and has a form & screen.

And while iPod's are nice to use they have a fair bit of annoying DRM on them so moving music to and from your iPod to other peoples computers can be a pain (I may be wrong/out of date about this)

Not that I'd dream of ilegally downloading music or anything....