What MP3 player?

[Sequoia]

I'm after replacing a rather ancient, and bulky, 20GB player, and would appreciate model suggestions.


Criteria are :-

- at least 20GB, rock-bottom minimum. More (say 60GB) is preferred.
- only interested in audio. No interest at all in video, photos, games, internet, etc
- sound quality is paramount
- because of the above point, high quality MP3 files MUST be supported
- I will prepare ALL files myself. Download capability (or services) are of zero interest
- because of the above point, either easy to use transfer software, or the ability to just copy files on
- decent battery life, and the ability to acquire, and user-change battery.


I don't care about brand, and I'm not interested at all in "fashion". If iPods are still currently in-vogue, I neither know nor care.

I will be using third party earphones, so anything that comes included is irrelevant - they'll get dumped in a drawer somewhere.

Price : within the bounds of sensible, whatever it takes to get the above.


Any suggestions that narrow my focus (or point at things to avoid) would be welcomed.

 

[Stellios]

Zen Vision:M, got mine a few days ago and i love it. I thought id miss my old Iriver H10, but i just dont.

Not sure what formats it plays in the way of music, but IIRC it plays more than an ipod/iriver does.

The software is lovely to use, its the olnt thing that was holding me back on *** purchase of the player, but its nicer than my H10 as the program is pretty much identical to windows explorer, so you can do drag and drop for files The software converts any file types that aint supported by the player, which is nice.

Ive played with a ipod video adn the zen, and the zen is just so much nicer to use in all aspects of the player.

 

[Stormrider]

I've been looking at getting a Zen:M myself for a while. Whats been holding me back is the choice of a small 4GB/8GB player that fits nuggly in my pocket, or a 30GB/60GB player that I can just stick everything on.
With Creative now releasing a 60GB version I'm thinking I'll go for the new version, whenever it appears.

 

[Mundu]

Vivitar P20. 20gb for a £100 and the bigger screen plus MP4, Divx and AVI playback and the card slots sold it too me.

 

[chrisd]

He said he had no interest in video playback.

 

[Sequoia]

He said he had no interest in video playback.

Absolutely right. The only thing I'm interested in is high capacity, high quality MP3 audio playback. I don't even care if it has a colour screen, as long as I can navigate the contents, and pick tracks or albums, to play. I wouldn't reject a player because it had a colour screen, or video playback, etc., but I wouldn't buy it for that, or pay a single penny more for it, because it'll never be used.

The Zen Vision:M looks interesting, especially as it looks like a 60GB version is imminent. But the lack of user-changeable battery? That's a very serious black mark, in my book. It does turn out, however, that you can get AA-based "extenders", to recharge on-the-fly. I still badly resent not being able to do my own battery replacement, though, as and when it becomes necessary.