[Bluestreak]

Hi all,

I've been doing some research to try to nail the ideal MP3 player for my needs. I'm basically looking for one with a DECENT FM tuner (or least offers the capability through a plugin). By decent I don't mean they just threw it in there as an afterthought, but that they actually put some thought into it so I don't have to climb to the top of St. Helen just to get a good reception.

I'll be joining a gym, so one that can withstand sweat, is scratch resistant and can endure a lot of shaking would be good. Long battery life is a plus. The gym obviously wont be the only place Im taking the player.

I also want the ability to record from FM at least, like the iRiver iFP-190T is touted to do.

Normally, I might go with the 190T then, but I'm leaning towards a microdrive/hard drive solution because I'd like to be able to use the player as a potentilal hard drive to leech megafiles I might download from work, and then transfer them to my home rig with little fuss. I have a dialup connection at home, and get a little tired of dedicating 10 hours a day to downloading patches for games I play. At the same time, I really don't need that much space, so a 10 GB and even a 4 or 1.5GB might suit me.

I've already ruled out the iPod: battery life and the costs are simply unacceptable.

I've looked at the iRiver hp-120, but no mention if it can record from FM. Other than that I'm stumped. Other than the features I've listed above in what Im looking for, everything else is icing on the cake.

Thanks for any suggestions!

 

[daveman]

The iHP-140 can't record from FM, and I don't think the 120 can, either. They do have pretty good tuners, however. Much better reception than the Rio flash players (the only thing I have for comparison).

 

[taylor]

Have you considered a separate FM tuner and MP3 player? That way, you could get a FM tuner much better than the one built in a MP3 player and a standalone FM tuner has much longer battery life. And you wouldn't have to worry about a FM tuner on the MP3 player.

 

[Bluestreak]

Thanks for the info. I was checking out the iRiver product lines and the iRiver iFP-395T seems to be the best fit for me, though the Archos Gmini 120 and 220 also offer the features I'm looking for with more space (20GB to 512MB), but I don't care for the tacky "photo album" feature along with the compactflash features, which are unnecessary. Don't know about their quality either, but can't argue with the price, which I think is pretty much the same as the iFP-395T, though it would seem to offer a LOT mroe in comparison. But 300 dollars for a FLASH player? Yikes! I can't see myself justifying the cost there, even though I'd have to pay 50 dollars (or whatever) extra to get the FM feature for the Archos.

In addition, I can't figure out the price discrepancies for iRiver's line of players. I noticed the iRiver iGP-100 has 1.5 GB, USB 2.0 and FM tuner (though no mention if it can record FM) yet costs a 100 dollars LESS than the iFP-395T, which only spares you 512 MB and is still USB 1.1???? What's up with that???

If It's quality I'm paying for, I might go with the iRiver than the Archos, even if I'm getting "less" in terms of space and feature. So now I'm kind of torn between abandoning the FM recording feature for more space, or living with just 512MB (the cost of the 1GB FLASH player is too obscene to consider)

BTW, what can an optical output be used for?

 

[Bluestreak]

Taylor, I thought about that but I'd be juggling two things instead of one, and it wouldn't address my desire to record from FM either. The ifp-395t would be perfect but the high price in relation to the low space (512 MB) is making me hesitate. I dont need that much space but my sweet spot was really the 1.5GB to 10GB range rather than merely 512MB.

 

[taylor]

You could always velcro the FM radio to the MP3 player.

The reason the 1.5gb player is less is because it's got a hard drive, which has a cheaper cost per megabyte than flash memory.

For a gym environment, I think flash would be the way to go. No moving parts to worry about.

 

[ghesekki]

I have the 390t that I bought to use at the gym. It's just like the 395t except it's only 256 mb. It's a great player that can record from fm and can be used as a usb drive. My suggestion is, however, to just grab a harddrive mp3 player. I found that mp3 players are good at the gym only if you have canal earphones since a lot of gyms blast their own music. However, I personally couldn't live with canalphones. Moreover, I found using mp3 players at the gym a hassle because people are bound to ask you how many sets you have left, and it's a pain inserting/removing earphones like 10 times in 2 hours.

That said, my iriver had pretty good fm reception so I would assume the same is true of the ihp-120.