MP3 Player for sport

Dange

Dange

Dange

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Joined
28 Jun 2005
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272
My mate wants to buy an mp3 player but because he wants to use it for sport (rowing, running, cycling) hes looking at the iPod Nano 4gig. Thats gonna set him back about £180 but that seems a bit silly as you can pick up 20gig players for £150 nowadays.

My question is, are there any hard disk (about 20 gig) mp3 players out there that can be used for sport without them skipping? Im thinking particularly of the creative zen micro 20 gig. If not, what are the best (read: cheaper) alternatives to the ipod nano in terms of quality and storage capacity.
 
I go running with my Creative Zen Xtra 40GB.

Well, when I say running, I mean jogging really. If I was super fit and I actually ran then it might skip.

It would be 100% fine with rowing and cycling though, and gentle jogging.
 
I'm skeptical about using a mechanical drive mp3 player for sports. As it will damage it if it gets dropped, and it will skip etc. I would recommend something like a Nano or a N-wa608 as they are solid state and are small so they don't get in the way.
 
To be honest, most players load a song in before it plays, so making even a HDD player skip would be pretty difficult.

The nano or another flash storage based player will obviously be your best choice, but i really dont think using a HDD player would make much differnce, athough the HDD in a HDD player would be more prone to failure in rough sports.
 
Around March last year I started a thread about this.
I went on every site looking at the fine print and the only company who recommended you could go running with their hard drive MP3 player was Apple and it was only for the Mini's and no other model.
This is where people will say rubbish but I went on every major manufacturers site and none of them recommended sports with HD players. It seems that a lot of this small print has dissappeared from these sites now.
This upset me because I didn't want an Ipod but because I run every day it became a necessity and I haven't looked back. It sounds awesome with over the head headphones and has also fell onto the floor at least 25 times with no damage.
If I was buying now it would be a 2 gig Nano because its a flash player, way smaller and has got no chance of skipping because theres no moving parts.
I went running with my 20 gig Archos for over a year but I realise I was putting its life in my hands.

My experience says its got to be a flash memory player and it seems the Nano is the best at this time.
 
Im still betting on getting a Shuffle, but apparantly way past due for a price reduction.

I hate running with my ipod, its too big and heavy, the shuffle is as light as a feather in comparison and great for exercise.
 
Kappa said:
Im still betting on getting a Shuffle, but apparantly way past due for a price reduction.

I hate running with my ipod, its too big and heavy, the shuffle is as light as a feather in comparison and great for exercise.
Click to expand...


Do you think you could live without a screen though?
Because I like to listen to something new all the time it did my head in when I used to go out with a 256 flash player and I didn't know who I was listening to.
It also mixed all the tracks up (shuffle) so when I thought I was listening to a certain band it was somebody else.

Thats me though.

And yes Jimbo, it is fine and its been all around the world with me but my running is a tad faster than speed walking so I don't give it much jolting.
Anybody faster than me bouncing it up and down will not do a HD any good at all.
 
I use my phone (An Orange SPV C550) as I got sick of carrying two devices around.

It takes Mini SD cards - and I have 1GB of Flash RAM on it (plus the phone's 16MB) at the moment.

I only ever listen in shuffle mode and re-fill the player once every two or three days.

I wrote a simple program to pick out random tracks from my hard drive and bung them into a folder, so I just copy that across.
If anybody wants a copy of it, just PM me.

As a bonus it's also a pretty good PDA :)
 
dmpoole said:
Do you think you could live without a screen though?
Because I like to listen to something new all the time it did my head in when I used to go out with a 256 flash player and I didn't know who I was listening to.
It also mixed all the tracks up (shuffle) so when I thought I was listening to a certain band it was somebody else.

Thats me though.
Click to expand...

I know i'll be fine, I will most probably put on my playlists on there, which I listen to pretty much every day on my big ipod and on my pc. I think its great just how small and light it is.
 
Moving parts & running are not a good idea. You may get away with it, but I risked it and lived to regret it. I wrecked my 4G ipod by running. I run/jog every day for around 40 minutes, while my ipod never skipped it now constantly freezes. I'm convinced the shock of running has significantly shortened its life. Rememeber also you WILL drop it. I suspect this is what drove the final nail in the head of my ipod. Get something flash based and cheap. Not sure if the Nano meets both those criteria as I know little about it.

Cheers Pete
 
i use a medion 1GB mp3 player bought from auction for about 35 quid.
it's small and light and it takes SD/MMC so can boost the 1Gb to a maximum of 2Gb that way.

tend to jog with it on random so it's effectively a shuffle but with track display and SD/MMC reader.
 
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