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4gb flash players....anyone use?

oly

skin cooker for the hive
Dec 6, 2001
5,118
6
Witness relocation housing
Thinking of taking the step to a digital media plyer and ditching the trusty CD walkman. Flash memory seems like it would be better since I will want to use it in an active environment. I also dont need it to store all my Music as I have the bulk of my CD collection recorded on my laptop. Most my files are in the windows media format, and the rest in regular MP3. I dont use Itunes and Im not really a downloader, but do borrow CD's. Generally those get burnt for me, or I back them up onto a disk for safe keeping.

So, looking today at circuitcity.com, I see that they have 2 different players with up to 4gb now. ( http://www.circuitcity.com/rpsm/catOid/-12952/N/20012898+20012952+552/rpem/ccd/categorylist.do ) I was expecting to look for just a 1gb player, but am now curious about this larger format.

SanDisk Sansa 4GB m260 Digital Audio Player for 179.00
4GB flash memory
Holds up to 1000 songs
Up to 19 hours playback
FM tuner
Voice recorder
PlaysForSure compatible


or,

Apple 4GB Black iPod Nano with Color LCD for 250.00
4GB flash drive
Up to 14 hours of playback
62% smaller than mini
Color backlit LCD
1,000 songs/25,000 photos
Slideshows with music


Anyone have any suggestions? The cheaper tag of the Scandisk is appealing, but do you get what you pay for? Or is the Apple just overpriced since they are percieved as the best.......
 

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,092
1,132
NC
Unless you're dying for a color display, why would you spend more money for an MP3 player that has a worse battery? Especially $70 more (please consider, that's a 40% increase in price over the Sandisk), when that's the only feature it offers over the Sandisk, and the Sandisk does offer an FM tuner and voice recorder, if you like that sort of thing.

The battery life vs. price issue seals it for me...
 

-dustin

boring
Jun 10, 2002
7,155
1
austin
also, if most of your stuff is .wma, might as well go with the SanDisk. it runs on a AAA, so you wouldn't have any problems with not being able to 'charge' it.
 

skinny mike

Turbo Monkey
Jan 24, 2005
6,415
0
the sandisk looks like it will be considerably larger than the nano. im biased because i like ipods but go with the nano.
 
Mar 10, 2005
479
0
Santa Cruz/Sacramento, Ca
After handling other sandisk players, I'm pretty sure the sandisk will be much thicker than the ipod.

But as much as I wuggle my friend's nanos, I just wouldn't trust them to hold up to active use. I've seen websites testing the nano by running it over and noting how it still works, but it just feels so delicate. It's more a piece of jazz than it is an active item. Go with the sandisk simply because if you scratch it, you wont cry.
 

kinghami3

Future Turbo Monkey
Jun 1, 2004
2,239
0
Ballard 4 life.
binary visions said:
iPod is WAY thinner.

I am a biased Apple user, who will hopefully have a Shuffle after this upcoming holiday that so many people like to call Christmas. My roommate has the nano, and it is a piece of art. Feather weight and you can fit it into your change pocket. The controls are fast and responsive, easy to navigate, and the color screen is a great benefit. The SanDisk looks clunky (I've seen them in person too), and the controls look difficult to navigate with no method of scrolling. Just navigating through 4 Gb of music on that small screen looks like an irritating experience to say the least.

On the other hand, the nano seems as though it would break much easier than the SanDisk (hence my preference for the Shuffle), and it scratches easily (only because the SanDisk doesn't glisten in the first place).

Just go to Best Buy if you want to check both of them out.
 

dfinn

Turbo Monkey
Jul 24, 2003
2,129
0
SL, UT
I have the previous version of the SanDisk player, the 1G one. It's held up very well to the abuse I've given it, no problems with it at all. It's for sale though, I got a nano.
 

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,092
1,132
NC
Yes, the iPod is thinner - whether or not that's a good thing is personal preference, I guess. Frankly, I'd rather have a stockier player than something tall and thin, given that I'd be keeping the thing in my pocket all the time and a thinner player is liable to break before a thicker one.

Wasn't posting the image to be misleading, I was just posting a size reference since there are no dimensions listed on the Circuit City page...

As I said earlier, though, you're paying $70 extra for something with fewer features, less battery life, and is arguably more fragile. I don't get it. Apple sure does make things look pretty, though... I used a Nano for a little while in Best Buy and it was a fine player from what I could tell. It's just too simple a device for me to get all worked up over a color screen or a slight ergonomic difference in the controls one way or another. It plays music. If one will do it for longer than another, and is going to be sturdier to boot, well, that's all I need to know. It's not a fashion statement for me.
 

kinghami3

Future Turbo Monkey
Jun 1, 2004
2,239
0
Ballard 4 life.
binary visions said:
As I said earlier, though, you're paying $70 extra for something with fewer features, less battery life, and is arguably more fragile. I don't get it. Apple sure does make things look pretty, though... I used a Nano for a little while in Best Buy and it was a fine player from what I could tell. It's just too simple a device for me to get all worked up over a color screen or a slight ergonomic difference in the controls one way or another. It plays music. If one will do it for longer than another, and is going to be sturdier to boot, well, that's all I need to know. It's not a fashion statement for me.
Usability is the kicker though, and that's what Apple's good at.
 

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,092
1,132
NC
kinghami3 said:
Usability is the kicker though, and that's what Apple's good at.
Well, if the device is really unusable, then the designers did a poor job. However, I don't find Apple devices to be particularly intuitive, just well-designed. If you have to learn one layout, then you can just as easily learn another layout - and until I've got reason to believe the Sandisk is simply an abhorrent design (which the reviews don't seem to indicate), then you're not really gaining anything by going with one layout over another.
 

dfinn

Turbo Monkey
Jul 24, 2003
2,129
0
SL, UT
another thing to consider is batteries. not battery life but having to replace AAA batteries all the time. it's wasteful and it's expensive. You could buy rechargables but if you factor that into the cost then the price difference is much less. if you don't plan on buying rechargables then something like the SanDisk player will be much more expensive in the long run. How often are you going to listen to 17 hours worth of music straight?

it's so easy to recharge the nano, you just plug the usb cable in.
 

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,092
1,132
NC
dfinn said:
it's so easy to recharge the nano, you just plug the usb cable in.
This is very true, obviously a very valid reason to buy a device like the Nano.

The flip side, of course, being that if you don't have access to a place to charge it, you can easily grab/obtain as many AAA batteries as you want.
 

.:Jeenyus:.

Turbo Monkey
Feb 23, 2004
2,831
1
slc
If you have iTunes, the nano is what you want. The inegration of the two is seamless, and VERY easy to use. Plus all the points eveyone else mentioned.
 

ZoRo

Turbo Monkey
Sep 28, 2004
1,224
11
MTL
kinghami3 said:
Usability is the kicker though, and that's what Apple's good at.
Indeed, and that's what all the other players are lacking; not performance or storage or even size, user friendliness. It's always been Apple's forte.
 

oly

skin cooker for the hive
Dec 6, 2001
5,118
6
Witness relocation housing
Having a single AAA battery is a plus to me. Just like with my DIGI camera with AA batteries, if I'm stranded somewhere without the ability to plug into a wall socket then I can still have my tunes.. (for instance I just got back from china where just plugging into a wall wasnt an option....and I also had about 24 hours of travel including layovers). To me its not an issue of cost, but more of convienience. I already have a set of AA rechargables, I just need a set of AAA now. And when i cant get a charge, i can stop at a 7-11 in any old place for an emergency bailout.

I stopped by 2 stores, Best Buy only had the 1gig but Circuit City had the 4gig and for only 179! Only downer was not having a floor display to check out, but from what ive read, its a pretty easy player to use.

Im set on buying the Scandisk with the early $$ ii got for X-mas.
 

narlus

Eastcoast Softcore
Staff member
Nov 7, 2001
24,658
63
behind the viewfinder
ZoRo said:
Indeed, and that's what all the other players are lacking; not performance or storage or even size, user friendliness. It's always been Apple's forte.
what other players are you comparing the Apple too?

i've found that i much prefer the system setup of the Rio Karma over my wife's iPod. there are a lot of neat things about it which the Apple doesn't do.

the 'user friendliness' of the Apples are always touted...give someone an iPod (who has never used one before) and tell them to turn it off. wanna bet how long that will take?
 

dfinn

Turbo Monkey
Jul 24, 2003
2,129
0
SL, UT
narlus said:
what other players are you comparing the Apple too?

i've found that i much prefer the system setup of the Rio Karma over my wife's iPod. there are a lot of neat things about it which the Apple doesn't do.

the 'user friendliness' of the Apples are always touted...give someone an iPod (who has never used one before) and tell them to turn it off. wanna bet how long that will take?
Took me less than 5 seconds. You hold the play button, just like on my SanDisk.
 

TreeSaw

Mama Monkey
Oct 30, 2003
17,669
1,847
Dancin' over rocks n' roots!
I would lean more toward the SanDisk myself too because of the ease of charging (AAA batteries). I've been looking into MP3 players as well and the SanDisk and the Creative ones are both high up on my list. Enjoy and let us know what you end up getting!
 

jimmydean

The Official Meat of Ridemonkey
Sep 10, 2001
40,941
13,134
Portland, OR
There was an article that stress tested the Nano and I was blown away ad how buff it was. They tossed it 40 feet in the air onto the sidewalk and the tunes were still playing. The screen busted when they ran over it with the car, but it still played.

I am getting the Sandisk because the screen on all ipods gets trashed easy. I have seen them scratched beyond view in a matter of minutes if you put it in your pocket with even things like paper.

Plus the iTunes thing for Linux sucks. The Sandisk works the same as a thumb drive for files and whatnot.
 

dfinn

Turbo Monkey
Jul 24, 2003
2,129
0
SL, UT
Plus the iTunes thing for Linux sucks. The Sandisk works the same as a thumb drive for files and whatnot.
There's several options for linux. I haven't gotten around to playing with them yet since I just got my nano but gtkpod looks like it does a fine job of transfering files to an ipod. You won't find anything as full featured as iTunes but if you are just looking to move songs onto the device there are definitely programs out there to handle that.
 

Mountain_Dewd

Monkey
May 30, 2005
331
0
whis
Id pay more for the apple because its better looking, thinner and tuckes away easier, has the color screen that is nice and the biggest thing, the awesome ipod interface that makes it so easy to navigate your music.
 

dfinn

Turbo Monkey
Jul 24, 2003
2,129
0
SL, UT
One other thing I noticed that I wanted to add to this was that the random song playing absolutely sucked on my SanDisk player. It would repeat some songs more than others, some songs would never get played. My nano so far has been much better.
 

SkaredShtles

Michael Bolton
Sep 21, 2003
65,379
12,533
In a van.... down by the river
dfinn said:
another thing to consider is batteries. not battery life but having to replace AAA batteries all the time. it's wasteful and it's expensive. You could buy rechargables but if you factor that into the cost then the price difference is much less. <snip>
Rechargable AAA batteries aren't very expensive...... :think:
 

SkaredShtles

Michael Bolton
Sep 21, 2003
65,379
12,533
In a van.... down by the river
So do some of these players come with a slot in which you can use existing memory cards? Or is the memory built into the player? Seems like it'd be much more useful to have a player that simply accepted a standard compact flash card........
 

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,092
1,132
NC
SkaredShtles said:
So do some of these players come with a slot in which you can use existing memory cards? Or is the memory built into the player? Seems like it'd be much more useful to have a player that simply accepted a standard compact flash card........
Compact flash is too big for these devices.

A lot of 'em are accepting SD cards, though. Not these ones we've been discussing in this thread, but some of 'em do.
 

narlus

Eastcoast Softcore
Staff member
Nov 7, 2001
24,658
63
behind the viewfinder
SS, some do, which is one of the reasons i went w/ a Rio Forge. they take Secure Digital, not CF (which would be too large), and prices continue to fall for memory. i bought the smallest internal memory (128MB) and bought a 512MB card.
 

DamienC

Turbo Monkey
Jun 6, 2002
1,165
0
DC
narlus said:
and that's intuitive?
About as intuitive as clicking the "Start" button to shut down Windows. :p

I'm totally digging my Nano for running. I hardly know it's there when carried along in the arm band and no worries about jarring a hard drive.
 

dfinn

Turbo Monkey
Jul 24, 2003
2,129
0
SL, UT
SkaredShtles said:
Rechargable AAA batteries aren't very expensive...... :think:
ok smarty pants, how much are they? Probably about $20 for the very cheapest batteries and recharger out there? I haven't bought any since I was a kid with a R/C car.
 

Ciaran

Fear my banana
Apr 5, 2004
9,839
15
So Cal
dfinn said:
ok smarty pants, how much are they? Probably about $20 for the very cheapest batteries and recharger out there? I haven't bought any since I was a kid with a R/C car.
Not sure about the charger but I bought two AA rechargables for my wireless mouse last night for 6 bucks.