[wupah]

Greetings,
 
I'm in the market for a new portable music player because I would like to distance myself from Itunes altogether.
 
- My budget is around 200$ but very flexible.
- I would like to play FLAC without converting them
- Ideally 30 gb + of storage space
- Decent battery life
- I don't have a portable amp
 
The headphones I use while travelling are Shure se425 and Audio technica ATH-CKM500

 

I was looking at:
-Cowon C2 (seems like a good piece of hardware, awesome battery life; people seem to dislike the touchscreen and UI)
-Sansa Clip + (Dirt cheap, excellent SQ; poor battery life)
- HIFIman HM-601 (awesome little player; battery life not the greatest)
-Ipod 5.5 (great sounding but still tied to itunes and slow HDD )
 
There are so many options to chose from, it's quite overwhelming. 
 
 
Any suggestions, comments or opinions are welcome !

 

[proton007]

Honestly for the price, you cannot beat the Clip+. Get an SD card, and you'll have plenty of storage.
You can get 4 of these for the price of one iPod.
Battery life is not that bad, 16 hours on one charge seems reasonable. 

 

[Achmedisdead]

Quote:

Honestly for the price, you cannot beat the Clip+. Get an SD card, and you'll have plenty of storage.
You can get 4 of these for the price of one iPod.
Battery life is not that bad, 16 hours on one charge seems reasonable. 

It is worth noting that you only get 16 hours with Rockbox. And if you use FLAC without Rockbox you'd be lucky to make it to 8 hours without the battery dying.

 

[JK1]

Why use FLAC on a portable payer? How many people can hear the difference between 320kbps mp3 and FLAC? i can't even hear the difference between 256 kbps mp3 and the original CD.

 

[wupah]

Quote:

Why use FLAC on a portable payer? How many people can hear the difference between 320kbps mp3 and FLAC? i can't even hear the difference between 256 kbps mp3 and the original CD.

I have a library of FLAC files, I just want to drag and drop and call it a day; 32gb is plenty for me.
Quote:

Honestly for the price, you cannot beat the Clip+. Get an SD card, and you'll have plenty of storage.
You can get 4 of these for the price of one iPod.
Battery life is not that bad, 16 hours on one charge seems reasonable. 

 
Thanks for the recommendation, I picked up the sansa clip +, rockboxed it and I have to say it's a great little player.