What to buy? Perplexed

Hey there,

I will soon have about 1000 tracks in Wav, ALAC and MP3 CBR format (I am perfectly happy to re-rip, convert etc. if necessary).

What I'm after is something portable to play my *whole* collection on.

I was thinking of picking up an iPod 5G, but they are all out of warranty now, and I have heard terribly scary things about jack and hard drive failure after a month, let alone after 5 years (Any iPods I buy now will have to have been used for that long :S)

Alternatively, I hear great things about other brands such as Cowon, iRiver, Creative, Sansa etc. However, I don't know which one to go for! I need a big storage capacity of >= 30 GB, but my main issue with non-iPods is the awful UIs...

Can anyone either inform me of what they think of buying a used iPod 5G, or recommend a high capacity non-Apple player?

Thanks,

Perplexed.

Expat, thanks for your reply.

What do you think of the new Classic 160GB? I've heard it's got an awful soundstage and a boring, flat, electronic signature. Otherwise it seems fantastic in terms of capacity, build and UI.

By the way, the J3 and X7 seem to be way out of my price range - I'm looking at around £100 max as I have recently splurged on building a new PC :) Are there any slightly older models which still have a nice capacity and UI?

It frustrates me that no one but Apple seems to be able to pull off a high capacity, great sounding and nicely interfaced player (Video 5G).

Perplexed.

I've looked at the T51 and it seems like an absolutely amazing dap

However, the software aspect is an enormous fail - the bugs are endless, and the UI is generally quite awful.

Here's a list of bugs!!!

• • No manual screen locking or screen turn off (have to wait for time out) - i think this is a big bug
  • Menu sliding is not as smooth as it should be - needs speeding up and kinetic scrolling like the original s:flo UPDATE :: little smoother with 2.00 - still needs work
  • Random locking of the player (like right now as i was exiting the USER EQ function, music stopped and screen frozen and mangled) FIXED IN VERSION 2.00
• • Selecting ARTIST does not go to ALBUM by artist but lists all songs from all albums by that artist (generic Chinese listing problem but a MASSIVE bug in my eyes)
  • playing music from the file manager doesn't start automatically, you have to press the play/pause button NEW 13/01/10
  • PlayFX EQ setting can not be applied to FLAC files
  • Does not recognize WMA ALBUM tag when sorting music and does not list them in the database
  • Does not display WMA album name when in music player
  • Album art not displaying for all songs even though all have album art (MP3) - random UPDATE - we now know MP3 above 4MB wont show art, below 4MB will show art
  • Album art not displaying at all for WMA
  • Song listing in music database is based on time copied to player and not alphabetical or by TAG ID track number (so even the old track num at front does not work)
  • Music Library updates every time you press ALBUM, ARTIST or TITLE categories FIXED IN VERSION 2.20
  • Time slider for song is not smooth at all (original sflo was excellent) - UPDATE - this has got better now after use and is not that bad at all
  • Slider for setting user EQ are also sticky making hard to slide the sliders
  • Lyric files not showing for WMA (MP3 does work for external LRC files)
  • Occasional break up of the UI when navigating the music UI UPDATE :: FIXED IN VERSION 2.00
  • Adding to playlist is really awkward (having to select a song by slide and release to highlight it)
  • In music interface it displays the song name using the file-name and not the tag name and is crammed in a small place making most hard to read
  • OGG files can play but are not cataloged in music DB, can be seen on ALL MUSIC but player does not read any OGG tags
  • can not play 24/96 FLAC - its in the bugs just to point it out really
• • Sometimes player will lock up on files it cant player - need to reset player (occasional)
  • Screen ripping on the video player (may be hardware related but would like to know from factory if can be fixed in firmware settings)
  • Exiting a video returns you to the root of the player folder and not to list you were on, meaning you need to re-navigate to where you were
• • Photo thumbs are squashed rather than cropped (making them look odd)
  • Generation of photo thumbs is slow and redraws every time making whole photo app slow
  • Switching between THUMB view and LIST view in image viewer goes back to main folder list rather than re-listing current view
• • When expanding to full screen, your place is lost in the book, it kinda shifts the text so you lose position and flow
  • Scrolling is very clunky and jerky

• Can only delete 1 song at a time in playlist, no quick clear option - need a clear playlist option
• Needs resume play for videos ADDED IN VERSION 2.20
• Needs incremental zoom for image viewer
• Needs manual screen lock or button to lock screen / turn screen off at will rather than wait for timeout
• Album art Needs to be bigger
• Cannot add multiple songs to playlist, need to be able to add whole album / artist etc

And you want me to spend £500 on an amp?

But thanks anyway for taking the time to give your thoughts.

Yeah, but didn't have time to respond. I use forums because of the fact that you can just leave them and come back at whatever time you choose, as supposed to IM.

PMed you back now.