MP3 Poertable music palyer

[Samuknow]

My 13 year old son wants a Music player for Christmas..

Been looking at a few, RCA, Sandisk, iRiver and so on.

What do you guys use? Likes and dislikes. Probably gonna spend 100.00 bucks or so. No iPODs please.

The creative units liik nice, but I have heard of some issues.....


Thanks everyone...

[aghastpumpkin]

Sony Walkmans are good. Yes I'll probably get slated for saying it.
But essentially they have great sound quality. Plus they have measures built in for you to help control the maximum volume, therefore showing yourself to be the caring thoughtful Father you are.....:P
They also have some intreresting features such as Intelligent Shuffle. You can also do a Time Shuffle, where it shuffles songs from particular years.
I also beleive Walkmans clock in at much lower prices than Nanos and suchlike.
I'd also take a look at Creatives products.

[Samuknow]

The Creative stuff looks good also. I will take a look at Sony. I forgot about the volume limit....Thanks AP

[Favu]

Any good reason for the dislike of iPods?

The 2Gig metal housed nano should resist a pretty active lifestyle and they ARE easy to use.

Apart from that iRivers are expensive but very good, in my experience, and Creative payers are good value but the Zen particularly had a lot of issues where it would crash and need to be reset.

[Favu]

Made a choice yet Sam?

[Samuknow]

No not yet. Still looking around. Thought I would get a little more participation here. I still have some time...

[WonderBread]

I personally like the Creative players. I've had the Vision:M since march and I've had Zero issues with it. I know they have a low failure rate. When i worked at Best Buy/Geek Squad we had to check each electronic item that came it to be returned. Out of the 9 months i worked there there were only 3 creative mp3 players that came in that were defective. I'm not even going to mention how many iPooods came and went that had issues.

[dsio]

The Creative Zens are really very good. Both the Creative and Sony portables will have better audio quality than Apple iPods, which I would never touch either. iRivers are a definite option, and benefit alot from rockbox, but I think a Zen would be the best bet.

As far as volume limiting goes, its only usefull if you own rubbish headphones. If you buy a player, I'd recommend getting a pair of phones to go with them rather than an expensive player with just earbuds.

Sennheiser HD437 for a medium sized headphone, or Koss KSC75s are VERY good $20 clipon headphones. The Koss phones are really very good and good value.

[Pitch]

Using a Zen here. Although there's isn't a Rockbox distro for it, it's still a damn good player.

Plenty of space so you can pack in some good, high quality .ogg files.

[Samuknow]

Thanks guys...

I'm sure my son will appreciate it......

[Samuknow]

Narrowed it down to this I think.

Creative

iRiver

Will read some more reviews....

[Favu]

They both look pretty neat. I would advise you to go to an electronics store or such to see if you can have a play with both of them before making a choice.

[Samuknow]

I was thinking of that. Great tip.

Get a feel for the controls. I will let everyone know of the outcome and what I think of my purchase....

Thanks guys

[WonderBread]

GO FOR THE CREATIVE!!!

[Favu]

Originally Posted by WonderBread

GO FOR THE CREATIVE!!!

A completely unbiased reply there!

Let us know what you choose Sam!