which mp3 player is better ?

[aces170]

which of them has better music clarity
1.apple ipod mini (4 GB) of 250$
2.creative muvo 2 (4 GB) of 184$
3.creative nomad zen extra (30 GB) of 200$
4.apple ipod 20 gb for 300$
also suggest some other mp3 players in this range.

 

[Malak]

I have never gotten an MP3 player, so I can't say much about clarity. Can't imagine it being any different on any of them. But seems the ipod is the most popular and gets the best reviews.

 

[TSDible]

Originally posted by: aces170
which of them has better music clarity
1.apple ipod mini (4 GB) of 250$
2.creative muvo 2 (4 GB) of 184$
3.creative nomad zen extra (30 GB) of 200$
4.apple ipod 20 gb for 300$
also suggest some other mp3 players in this range.

It isn't fair to compare the muvo2 and nomad zen extra to the apples.

Look into the Zen Micro (5GB) and the Zen Touch (20-40GB). These are the current generation of Creative players and are quickly closing the gap on the iPod.

I have a 3G ipod and it is very nice. The interface is very intuitive. However, I must admit that the iTunes software is a bit of a pain.

Keep in mind that the Creative players have removable batteries and a longer playing time than their equivalent iPod. In addition, I think that both of the creative players add FM tuning.

Last year, the choice was a clear in the iPods favor.

This year, the lines are blurred. I would have to say that the new creative players add more bang for the buck than the iPods.

Just my $0.02

 

[DaveSimmons]

I've ordered the $200, 30 GB Zen Xtra (plus an extended warranty to fix Creative's lousy 90 days). It's a little bigger than the 20 GB ipod, but $100 cheaper with 50% more storage.

I'll probably spend $25 of that $100 to get better software (than Creative or iTunes) from Red Chair

 

[ed21x]

add a Rio Carbon, iRiver h120, Cowon's 20 gb offering, and iRiver's most recent 5 gb color DAP to that list. They are all fantastic players. In the end, it all depends on what you're really looking for.

 

[chilled]

Originally posted by: ed21x
add a Rio Carbon, iRiver h120, Cowon's 20 gb offering, and iRiver's most recent 5 gb color DAP to that list. They are all fantastic players. In the end, it all depends on what you're really looking for.

Right on there.

"iRiver Unveils iPod Mini Killer : H10"

 

[knyghtbyte]

do you actually need that much space? i have a Creative 256Mb MuvoTX, holds around 3-4 hours of music (obviously that depends on quality, but i currently have a mix of MP3 128, 160 and 192, plus some WMA files which it can play back and i have a few minutes shy of 4 hours), gets around 12-14 hours playback time from the single AAA battery, if you get headphones that need to draw a lot of power then u might only get around 10 hours, personally i recommend Sennheiser PMX-60's, dont draw much power, are neck-band stylee and have very good sound.
The MuvoTX gives out good sound, acts as a pen-drive too on any WinXP puter system, or with software install on older windows, drag and drop facility gives u 2 second per song transfer speed at the slowest generally as it uses USB 2.0. And you can now get it in a 512Mb version, which means you can happily hold up to 8 hours of music on the 'near CD quality' settings or mebbe 6 hours on higher quality rippings
only costs around £130, dunno what it would cost in the US tho.
oh and comes with a cute armband you can fix around your arm (or in my case my wrist) so its not bulky in your pocket and easily managable on the move (on the train/bus etc)
has an equalizer, folder management, usual shuffle features, oh i think newest version might have radio, and also dictafone facility.....its lightweight and around the size of a large cigarette lighter...

9/10 in my books. (doesnt get ten cuz its MP3...hehe no portable device will ever get 10/10 from me)

 

[bigal40]

Why not get get a sony atrac3 cd player. I have one and can put like twenty hours on one disk at 128kbps. I get like 25 hours on 2 AA batteries and i paid 60 bucks at walmart for it.( i can't remeber the model number). WHy pay 5 tiumes that much for an ipod. It doesn't hold as much music on one disk but with a few .5 cent cd's you can store much more.

 

[Elemennop]

I've tried over 10+ different MP3 players with Etymotic's ER-4p headphones, and the iPod definitely has the best musical clarity.

 

[BlueWeasel]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
I've ordered the $200, 30 GB Zen Xtra (plus an extended warranty to fix Creative's lousy 90 days). It's a little bigger than the 20 GB ipod, but $100 cheaper with 50% more storage.

I'll probably spend $25 of that $100 to get better software (than Creative or iTunes) from Red Chair

That's exactly what I did...I bought the 40gb Zen Xtra from Staples a few weeks ago and bought Notmad Explorer (from Red Chair) in a day or two.

 

[gtd2000]

Originally posted by: knyghtbyte
do you actually need that much space? i have a Creative 256Mb MuvoTX, holds around 3-4 hours of music (obviously that depends on quality, but i currently have a mix of MP3 128, 160 and 192, plus some WMA files which it can play back and i have a few minutes shy of 4 hours), gets around 12-14 hours playback time from the single AAA battery, if you get headphones that need to draw a lot of power then u might only get around 10 hours, personally i recommend Sennheiser PMX-60's, dont draw much power, are neck-band stylee and have very good sound.
The MuvoTX gives out good sound, acts as a pen-drive too on any WinXP puter system, or with software install on older windows, drag and drop facility gives u 2 second per song transfer speed at the slowest generally as it uses USB 2.0. And you can now get it in a 512Mb version, which means you can happily hold up to 8 hours of music on the 'near CD quality' settings or mebbe 6 hours on higher quality rippings
only costs around £130, dunno what it would cost in the US tho.
oh and comes with a cute armband you can fix around your arm (or in my case my wrist) so its not bulky in your pocket and easily managable on the move (on the train/bus etc)
has an equalizer, folder management, usual shuffle features, oh i think newest version might have radio, and also dictafone facility.....its lightweight and around the size of a large cigarette lighter...

9/10 in my books. (doesnt get ten cuz its MP3...hehe no portable device will ever get 10/10 from me)

Man.... thats US$250...you can keep your "cute armband" and the rest of it

I'm British too and you just got to realise we get totally screwed on consumer electronics in the UK.

Back to mp3 players - I'm perfectly happy with my Rio
Rio Nitrus for a non discounted price of £78 - you can pick them up for around US$100 in the hot deals section at times.

 

[knyghtbyte]

Originally posted by: gtd2000

Originally posted by: knyghtbyte
in my books. (doesnt get ten cuz its MP3...hehe no portable device will ever get 10/10 from me)

Man.... thats US$250...you can keep your "cute armband" and the rest of it

I'm British too and you just got to realise we get totally screwed on consumer electronics in the UK.

Back to mp3 players - I'm perfectly happy with my Rio
Rio Nitrus for a non discounted price of £78 - you can pick them up for around US$100 in the hot deals section at times.

believe me, i know we get screwed on electronics...lol im a hifi/home theatre nut and have seen for years how badly we fare.........but against other mp3 player at UK prices the MuvoTX 512Mb does represent good value, it does have good sound quality, good battery life, and its totally solid state so u can shake the little ah heck as much as u like and it still plays happily, anything with a HDD inside is still prone to occasional glitches, not as bad as a portable CD player i grant you, but for someone who travels everyday on the Bakerloo tube line to work believe me u want solid state...lol

 

[icejunkie]

I have an iPod 20GB and I can't imagine anyone needing that much space. Even if you are gonna fill it all up, you will listen to about 3% of te songs that you have on it. BUT, I do find the iPod playback quality a lot better than some of the ones you mentioned. The new gen Creative's do offer more bang for the buck, so you might wanna check out those if you're on a budget.

 

[thecrecarc]

get a iriver.... and when rockbox comes out for iriver, use that firmware

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: icejunkie
I have an iPod 20GB and I can't imagine anyone needing that much space. Even if you are gonna fill it all up, you will listen to about 3% of te songs that you have on it.

Some of us geezers have large collections -- I own around 1,300 - 1,400 CDs, none of them burned copies. I'll often listen to 5+ CDs a day while working so I do make it through my collection.

I use lossless FLAC for my music server box, but will settle for something like 256 kbps MP3 or maybe 192 kbps WMA for my Nomad, which is only 300-400 of my CDs.

 

[Tostada]

With 1GB flash cards down to $60, I can't think of many reasons anybody would want a hard drive based player. I really don't understant the popularity of them.

- they cost more
- they're bigger / they weigh more
- they're more fragile
- they have less battery life

The only thing they have going for them is capacity, which is pretty trivial for must uses comparied to all the negative points. You're talking about fitting 50+ hours of music on something with less than 10 hours of battery life.

Then again, I only use my MP3 player when I'm running, and it's nice having something ridiculously small that I can beat up without worrying. I like having about 14 hours of music from a single AA battery.

 

[thecrecarc]

Originally posted by: Tostada
With 1GB flash cards down to $60, I can't think of many reasons anybody would want a hard drive based player. I really don't understant the popularity of them.

- they cost more
- they're bigger / they weigh more
- they're more fragile
- they have less battery life

The only thing they have going for them is capacity, which is pretty trivial for must uses comparied to all the negative points. You're talking about fitting 50+ hours of music on something with less than 10 hours of battery life.

Then again, I only use my MP3 player when I'm running, and it's nice having something ridiculously small that I can beat up without worrying. I like having about 14 hours of music from a single AA battery.

cost more?!?! lets see..... a 30gb zen xtra is 200$, 20gb with flash cards is....... 1200$!!!! and, u don't need to carry anything otherthan the mp3 player itslef and they are pretty small. and some hdd mp3 players have 20hr battery life. and some people littery dropped theyer mp3 on a hard floor and they did not break

 

[Tostada]

thecrecarc: You're joking, right? Where the hell are you getting the idea that I said you should buy 20GB in flash memory? Try re-reading my post. If you want 20GB of space, you have to get something with a hard drive, but that's the only reason you would. Solid state players are more durable, lighter, smaller and the batteries last longer. Hard drive players have more capacity. That was my point, no more, no less.

Why the "some people this" and "some people that"? That's not useful information. I'm sure some people drop hard drives all the time, but how does that change anything? Would you want an iPod that had been dropped?

These 4GB hard-drive players seem to be the worst of both worlds. Either you want to stick a huge chunk of your music collection on a player, or you want something that is extremely portable at the expense of having to plug it into your computer every few days.

 

[aces170]

soeone mentioned that creative has removable batteries .well then are those batteries rechargable...or u have to purchase new ones.

 

[Sam334]

Originally posted by: aces170
4.apple ipod 20 gb for 300$

You can get them for $269 with a student discount at the Apple store. I got mine at the NYU store for that price, but I called the Apple store and they told me they too offer that discounted price for students.

 

[TSDible]

Originally posted by: aces170
soeone mentioned that creative has removable batteries .well then are those batteries rechargable...or u have to purchase new ones.

The are rechargeable packs.

They are still proprietary, but are easy to replace, unlike the iPod batteries.

 

[addragyn]

"
which of them has better music clarity
1.apple ipod mini (4 GB) of 250$
2.creative muvo 2 (4 GB) of 184$
3.creative nomad zen extra (30 GB) of 200$
4.apple ipod 20 gb for 300$
also suggest some other mp3 players in this range."

How you encode your music and what headphones to buy are what you should be looking into.

 

[kaizersose]

Originally posted by: TSDible

Originally posted by: aces170
soeone mentioned that creative has removable batteries .well then are those batteries rechargable...or u have to purchase new ones.

The are rechargeable packs.

They are still proprietary, but are easy to replace, unlike the iPod batteries.

the creative zen micro even comes with two batteries.

 

[Gurck]

Do a search, this has been gone over a million times. In short, the ipod is one of the worst players out there.

 

[Yourself]

I have a Muvo2 4gb player and I love this thing. I think the sound quality is a bit better than my 3g IPOD and drap drop is so much nicer than a software interface. Battery life is close to stated specs. I won't say it's the best out there, but it's a very solid choice.


Self


PS-I can't stress how nice it is to use just as a portable hard drive. It's makes working on people's computers so much easier as I can take all the files I would ever need to fix/install something.