what player to buy

[wsw]

hey,

does anyone use an mp3 player with:

-extendable memory (card slot,...)
-powered by AAA (no internal battery)
-good sound quality
-equalizer
-long battery life
-plug in usb and copy paste to the player functionality
-price:less than a 100 € (if the earphones are good, it may exceed this limit, also if it has a memory card or rechargeable battery delivered with it)

not absolutely necessary but +:
-wma,ogg,flac,... support


i've been thinking about getting a hama dmp 200, however i can't find any reviews on it's sound quality.

any suggestions?

[Lowlander]

There are a few topics about this on the forum. I'd advice to use a shopping comparison site to help you figure out which player fits your needs.

[dbeko]

does anyone use an mp3 player with:

-extendable memory (card slot,...)
-powered by AAA (no internal battery)
-good sound quality
-equalizer
-long battery life
-plug in usb and copy paste to the player functionality

SanDisk Sansa e140 1GB MP3 Player is one such animal. I have one and while it only has a gigabyte of memory, it has a Secure Digital slot for up to 2 more gigabytes. Powered by a single AAA battery. I haven't gotten much more than 12 hours of music out of one battery though.

This player fits your description/requirement to a "T" and retails for $80 USD or so. No SD card included though.

Hope this helps.

[Eyal]

I saw the description of my Sansa e130 (512 MB). I use high capacity rechargeable batteries that last almost 2 workdays, and always have a spare batterie in my pocket and it takes only 10 seconds to change it.

Just the hearphones that come with the player (unless they change the model since) worth buying it.

[Steegy]

-powered by AAA (no internal battery)

I would strongly NOT recommend this.
If you want some arguments about why not, just ask.

[Lowlander]

I would like to know why you would reconmend against standard (AAA) batteries that can be replaced as needed (including by recharchable ones).

[Steegy]

First: batteries are bad. They are bad for the environment, take to much energy for what they give, their charge doesn't last very long and are soon completely dead, ... so you should prevent using then and use electronity from the power grid instead, as much as possible.

Obviously that's not possible for portable devices, however, we can make sure that our batteries are optimal: use batteries that fit the device you're using it with (high power of long life, depends), use Li-Ion (or even better: Li-polymer) batteries (portable devices have these, AAA is not that) because they're much better ((almost) no memory effect, better recharge cycle (automaticly stops recharging so no explosion danger, damage or extra energy waste), last much longer (both recharge life and total life), ...) charge (much) faster and they fit nicely in the player and are small.

AAA is only recommended when you really need "standard" batteries and you don't care about how thick the player is (or any of the other disadvantages of standard rechargeable batteries). These batteries don't last very long (however NiMH are already much better than NiCd rechargeable batteries, but this certainly is still far away from Li-Ion).

If you're afraid that your built-in player's battery will die before you do, then you can order an extra one before the series gets discontinued. Some players even have an extra battery delivered standard.

Wiki has a bit of information about different types of batteries here and a little comparison (I can't say anything about the correctness of the values, but they give a clue).

Cheers
Steegy

[Lowlander]

Well, ok, but the main issue with build in is that you can't change to charged one when you're not able to recharge. Anyway using rechargable AAA's will help the environment some (even more if you use them in different devices (and even more if you charge them with solar power)).

[Steegy]

Well, just as you can have more than 1 (pair of) AAA battery/ies, you can have more than one internal battery (as backup, or if one dies after years of use). So, except that an internal battery's unit cost is larger, there s no difference.
In contradiction to what you say, AAA are less environment friendly (they are less efficient: for the same output, they need more input (more power to charge (they overcharge), they usually decharge sooner so more charge cycles, then auto-decharge more, ...).
You can also charge your internal batteries using solar power, wind mills, biomass, seasnakes, ... (you can even heat your whole house for that sake) so I don't see the point.

[Lowlander]

Well I'm not saying your wrong at all, I'm just saying that AAA's aren't as bad.

As for having a propriety battery, having a backup for each device in the house would be a lot more wasteful than using a standard battery. And as for solar, for AAA and variants there solar chargers around as for propriety I can't say with certainty, I've seen some for cell phones, but not as widely available as AAA solar chargers. If you use green energy at your home this of course would make propriety better. And based on battery complaints for all kinds of devices a lot of propriety batteries seem to last little (charge durations goes down over time).

As I said I just wanted to add my opinion that AAA's aren't that terrible, which is better, I don't know, I haven't read any reports on this issue. In this whole point might not matter if recycling were to be good, but I doubt that.

[paulmt]

I agree that all batteries are environmentally unfriendly, not just at the point of disposal, but in their manufacture. It's for this reason I question the point of the hybrid car.
The savings in carbon emissions (I believe) are far out weighed by the environmental damage done during manufacture of the batteries, not to even go into the inevitable disposal and possibly generated energy that is wasted charging the banks of batteries each day.

Having said that I think AAA batteries are not to bad and seem to give good life. I don't like embedded batteries as often when the do fail your devise is not repairable.

[Lowlander]

Well then you will like this article, although I don't find it credible it does raise an interesting issue, batteries are inherently bad.

And yes your charging method can influence how environmental friendly batteries are, but in this case that would be the same for embedded or AAA batteries. A correct issue noted is that in some embedded devices it isn't possible to change the battery.

[Eyal]

Creative players are expensive for what they offer, I think. In my opinion, the worst is RCA, and the best for the price is mPIO.