I'm buying an mp3 player...need advice.....

[Marmar]

Ok.....here's the deal....

I'm flyin to Cali next month, and I need an mp3 player for the trip.....

NO iPODS PLEASE
Here's what I'm lookin at.....I would like at least 4gigs.....SD card expansion.....and FLAC playback......

Lemme know what ya think....

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/486392-REG/Cowon_D2_4096BL_D2_4GB_Personal_Media.html

and also I was lookin at the 4gig iRiver......but that has no expansion......4gigs won't hold a lot of FLAC's......but, if I must....

but if anyone has any other suggestions, feel free to drop em in.....FLAC isn't necessary.....but I'm lookin for reliability, and battery life mainly.....

[tet]

i don't think you'll find anything that does FLAC and is still good on battery life, the consensus is that it just eats up too much power for it to be worthwhile....

[Marmar]

check out that COWON......52hrs??

[Marmar]

the only thing I DONT like about the D2, is that it's a touch screen......

[rowjimmy]

The Cowon players are decent from what I've heard. I seem to recall that Brewhead had one...

[nab]

I don't know if the Cowan supports gapless playback or not, but you definitely want to check before you buy.  I found out the hard way that lossless support doesn't automatically equal gapless playback.  I still got such a good deal on my Philips HDD6330 (30 Gigs for 90 bucks) that I didn't end up taking it back, but I had assumed wrongly that since it supported wav that it would play it back gaplessly. 

[whyweigh5.0]

heh. I got my MP3 player because I was going on a trip to California too.  I needed something for the flights

[Marmar]

gapless isn't a big deal......

anything I want gapless is gonna be just one huge file......so...that isn't really an issue.....

my big thing is battery life.....I'll have no computer with me, so USB only charging options aren't ideal.....

[drvinestein]

I know you're saying no iPods, but they have an attatchment where if your battery goes low, you can hook it in and power it off batteries (AA or something, I think)

Whatever device you're looking into might have a similar attatchment if you're concerned with not losing power during the flight.

I think that playing FLAC's eats up the battery power more rapidly as well.

[Marmar]

well...I'm in a pinch.....luckily my buddy is letting me borrow his 8gb zen microphoto.....

now....I've been reading the reviews on the iRiver E100 (plays flac) and the Cowon iAudio7 (plays flac).....I'm leaning towards a Cowon for the simple fact of battery life......all the reviews are pretty much saying 35-40hrs of flac playback.....60hrs for mp3's!.....that's insane....the only thing I don't like about the iA7 is that it's memory is fixed.....I know the D2 is expandable, with similar battery life, but it costs more due to the touch screen/etc....

The E100 is expandable, but the battery life isn't so good.....6-8hrs of FLAC/15-18hrs of mp3......

Also.....I'm seriously thinking about maybe doing the refurbished bit and getting a Vision:M or an older 40gig Nomad.....

DECISIONS....I hate making them.....

[jasonsobel]

I'd recommend the Trekstor Vibez.
http://www.trekstor.de/en/products/detail_mp3.php?pid=66
I've got the 12 GB version, and it's great.  It plays FLAC and has great battery life.  The website says 20 hours.  I've never gone that long without recharging, but I have gone 12-15 hours of playback without recharging, and it was still going

the only thing you mention that it doesn't have is the lack of SD card memory expansion.  However, I have read online (and I am planning to do this at some point, although I haven't yet) that you can replace the memory with a CF card.  with 32 gb CF cards available for reasonable cost, that'd be a big storage upgrade from the 12 GB that comes standard.