I am in the market for a MP3 player. I want it to plug directly into a USB port (ie no cables). I want it to have rechargeable batteries, that recharge while in said USB port. I want it to be able to play MP3, OGG and maybe FLAC files. After some googling, here is what I came up with Cowon iAudio F2 for $80. If only want to play MP3s, I found this 8GB Sansa Digital Multimedia MP3 Player for $70. Anybody have experience of either of these or have another suggestion?
My wife and I both have the sansa. It's a fantastic little device. Woot has them all of the time. It recharges by USB, but it has an external cable.
I use a psp slim. Its expensive cause you have to buy an external 8GB memory stick but i just love the big wide screen to watch videos and look at pictures. There's also some cracks to use it as a phone with skype. I'm not big on gadgets so i use it as an all in one (games,pics,video,music).
I have a Sony mp3 player that plugs into USB for recharging and transfers. The transfer software absolutely sucks, though, and there is no way getting around using it. Due to this, I would never, ever recommend a Sony product and will never buy one again in the future.
i have a cowon iaudio g3. love it. cowon iaudio has some great devices but theyre not very well known. check out their fan site: http://www.iaudiophile.net
I've had three .mp3 players used mostly for audio books and slowly got more and more expensive ones. Finally, after I had an 8 GB philips crap out I got an Ipod Nano. It's 20x better than anything I've had and it was totally worth the extra cost for me. I'm trying to get my dad and brother into .mp3 players and it's hard for me to tell them to go out and spend the money for an Ipod, but there are some really crappy .mp3 players that are a waste of money. I'm especially concerned for my dad because he's got a cheap .mp3 player and he has trouble navigating through it to find what he wants. Would the Sansa be a good recommendation for someone that doesn't really have the patience to try and figure out how to navigate through the device? If so, I may get him one for father's day.
I got my 30 gig Zune for $99... and while the Zune software isn't great, the feature set and price more than make up the difference.
i have the same sansa..and i love it! i used to have problems with it when i first got it a year ago..for some reasons songs/videos would disappear and the screen turned into all static (like on the tv), but i reformatted it, and it works perfectly fine now. although, some of my songs aren't appearing when i search for it under artists, and they only appear when i look at the overall music list. despite that, i'm pretty satisfied with it. to firecat: it sorts the music by artists, albums, songs, genres, playlists, and my top rated..it's relatively easy (for me) to find what i'm looking for. i think it should work for your dad. i think the playlists and top rated should make it easier for him to find his favorites more easily.
I bought an 8GB sansa and I completely regretted it. First of all, I have many Asian songs, so it wouldn't read any asian fonts. That made searching for the songs a complete nightmare. Even after IDing all my MP3s, I still had trouble finding songs in English. I tried reformatting it many many many times and yet I would always find problems. After 5 days, the center menu button fell out (a cheap piece of circular plastic). It just came off for no apparent reason. I lost it, and it made for a complete eye-sore. Therefore, I contacted Sansa's customer service. They were rude and of no help. I honestly just wanted them to replace the 5 cent piece of plastic, but they wouldn't even do that. I bought a Sony Walkman, and although the program is a bit of a hassle, I found it to be 100 times better than the Sansa crap. Just my .02.
Did you look for a firmware upgrade? I looked for a firmware upgrae for my samsung MP3 player and was happy to find Chinese fonts. The Zune however, failed entirely on the Asian character font side, and continues to ignore Asian users plea for Asian font. I'm warming up to the device (despite it still have horrible software, interface, and stupidy of not being able to use as a portable HD) because 30GB for $99 is just awesome. But would not be a product I recommend. The IPod just completely out does it, especially with the Asian Font thing.
I've had the Sansa E320 (model # may be off), and I just bought a Sansa Clip. Excellent players, plug and play, they just act as an external drive when plugged in. They are so easy to use that my non-technical wife has no problem with them. The battery life is incredible - over 20 hours for the e series and 15 for the clip. You can also hack the e series and put a new O/S and games on it if you want to. Basically, both of them are incredible value for the money, and are occasionally available on craigslist for even cheaper.
I want to back this post up -- bought a Sony MP3 player a while back and transferring music in their ATRAC (?) format was a nightmare. I would never buy another Sony player and I don't use the one I have now -- in fact I took all their software off my computer.
