[Mahoro]

I have search through a lot of threads as well as googling and still can't come out with conclusion.
I have been debating to change my iPOD 3G 20GB, I have swaped the HD once and batter 3 times and I feel like an upgrade after I changed my IMEs from e3c to tri 10pro.

I am currently using iPhone 3G 8GB however, with a mere 4GB of space isn't anywhere enough.

There are three options I could thought of,
- iPOD 7G 160GB, I heard the new chip produces better sound than the previous generations, and share similarity to my iPhone 3G.

- Cowon D2+, 4 or8GB, with the SDHC slot, it can be expanded to 36 to 40GB. And Cowon has been famous for its sound signature.

- Teclast T51, this is a new mp4 player from China, I heard a lot of praises in the internet. It claimed it uses philips and decent opamp chipsets. However, it is rather buggy, miserable battery life and only has 8GB of storage with TF card expansion (the max I could find for TF cards are 16GB, = 24GB)


Edit: After a little more search, seems T51>Cowon D2, is there any comparision between T51 &iPOD 7G

 

[pxl1500]

The T51 also goes by the nationite s:flo2 and that can be bought with 16Gb of memory, but its currently on preorder and they are only available on mp4 nation.

There is also an impression thread and another review on head-fi

Never tried the D2, but i do have an S:Flo2 and i can say the sound is very good on it, i haven't had any issues with the actual software on the player but battery life could be better.

 

[Aevum]

The D2 is a tank, it does have some Bass roll off, but mine is 2 years old and sounds great with my IE8,

also, it can be expanded to 48GB, 16 + 32gb SDHC,

 

[headfever]

Ipod is the most wise option among the 3. For Ipod are the same league between the 3 DAPs in term of sound quality. The plus is you can get a huge memory and stable software. Take IPOD is safty. to be frankly I more lean to the sound quality of D2 of my taste. But most of my friends select Ipod.

 

[Aevum]

the thing is, sound quality wise, the D2 wins
software wise, well UMS will win over proprietary every day becuase you´re not chained to the software and you can have your choise of which software you want to use (itunes, songbird, mediamonkey, or just drag and drop your stuff), i would never recomend an ipod to a friend of mine, they are inferior in almost every aspect, the only plus they have is the accesory support, but sound quality, software lock in, battery life, format support, they tend to lose in almost every aspect,

 

[Mahoro]

Thanks for the info guys,
Looks like the T51 took the lead after all the digging, I am currently reside in Hong Kong, so getting one (unfortunately, only 8GB for T51) isn't as hard.
But I am still thinking if that would be enough, 8GB+ 16GB TF (max as of current standard, though it supports up to 32GB, it will be priced 3X the price of 16GB when it release).

 

[ZARIM]

SOny X series and Cowon S9 are known for there great sound quality but 160GB ipod is better if you want to use amplifier with it.