Lookin' for a good MP3 player

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I am buying an MP3 player soon but there are so many out there I can't choose. It should have these two things:

1. Long Battery Life
2. 30GB or more in storage.


Price does not matter.

I'll take any suggestions.

Thank you.
 
I bought an iRiver before seeing Creative, so I reccommend the Creative. My iRiver is a 512MB, so I can't comment on the quality of the GB models. Like Integra, I too have heard good things on the Zen.
 
I had one of those 30GB Video iPod, it was great. It froze on me couple of times, plus the battery life isn't great, but I'd still recommend it.
 
iPod (30 or 60gb, the 60 offers better battery life) 5G + ROCKbox
iRiver H300 (can be bought in 20 or 40gb versions) + ROCKbox (you'll get almost 19hrs of continuous playback! If you upgrade the battery, you'll get 30 easily)
Creative Zen Vision:M (30gb)
iAudio X5L + ROCKbox (available in 20, 30, 40 and 60gb versions, the 'L' stands for extended batt. life)
 
The previous generation iPods don't even compare with the players I've listed. He said he wanted decent battery life, not 6 hours a charge.
 
I have a 60GB iPod 5G.

I've heard good things about Creative as well, but since the iPod is the only MP3 player I have ever owned, I recommend it.

GTRacer4, have you used ROCKbox? If so, how is the interface (usability-wise) and does it improve the battery life?
 
Yes, I use it on my iRiver, massive improvement in battery life (I used to get like 8 hours previously) I have done a battery test recently here:
http://www.misticriver.net/showpost.php?p=467775&postcount=63

While I can't fully comment on the iPod, the user interface is mostly the same in terms of functionality, with the added plus of being able to make your own themes. Battery life is about 11hrs, since ROCKbox hasn't been fully optimised for iPods yet. But IMO, it's still worth it for the extra features such as:
- Gapless playback (listening to Pink Floyd and live albums is pure bliss!)
- Wider format support: FLAC, OGG, WAV. I could go on, but I've forgotten :p
- Lots of games. Doom, Pacman, and a Gameboy emulator
- Replaygain support
- UMS capability, this is a big reason for me, you can totally bypass iTunes and organise your music your own way. The player will just show up as a HDD so you can organise folders in a file tree format and you can put anything else on it. I've once installed Photoshop on my iRiver so I can plug it into any PC and work on my magazine design.



ROCKbox Wiki
Rockbox for the iPod 4G, Color, Nano and Video models all have a very wide range of codec support - MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Musepack, FLAC, AAC, ALAC, AC3 and WavPack are all supported in Rockbox. Additional music playback features include gapless playback and customizable crossfading, as well as a five-band fully-parametric equalizer to fine-tune sound output. iPods also get ReplayGain support for volume level normalization, and a large number of plugins, including games, applications, and "demos" - have some fun when you've got some free time to kill, open files with the text viewer, make use of the stopwatch, view some JPEG photos, or turn your iPod into a desktop clock. Also enjoy On-The-Go playlist creation and adjustment, full file bookmarking support and much more.

Extra views on ROCKbox + iPod are here:
http://www.misticriver.net/showthread.php?t=39188

It's also open-source, so it's constantly improving.
 
Thanks for the information. 👍 I guess I'll change my recommendation of an iPod 5G to an iPod 5G + Rockbox.
 
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