Hey dudes, I know I made a thread about this a while back, but, now I'm in the position to actually buy one. So, what do you recommend? My budget is less then $275. Thanks dudes.

Buy a Sony Walkman Cassette player.

THAT is high tech, my friend.

Or just hire an orchestra to follow you round everywhere you go, singing softly into your ears.

Get just a LITTLE bit more and get a Toshiba Gigabeat S. It'll be worth your money--just came out, and it's proclaimed to be even better than the iPod as far as overall goes, and the interface supposedly rocks. I think CNet has a review up.

If you're not willing to save, search for some good Samsung players, or maybe take a look at the iAudio X5 if you can find it for that cheap, or maybe even look for some Creative players.

Really, your best bet is just shopping around, seeing what each player has to offer, and comparing prices via pricegrabber.com

While I've not used it myself (I have a 2gig iPod Nano), I've heard some really good reviews for the SanDisk Sansa e200 series of players. The highest priced on in that series is 4 bucks out of your price range so it might be along the lines of what you are looking for. I'll see if I can dig up the review I remember hearing, but if I forget to it shouldn't be hard to search for.

iPod if you want to have good car integration. Here's one for $259

http://cgi.ebay.com/White-Apple-iPod-VIDEO-30GB-MP3-PHOTO-PLAYER-2-5-LCD_W0QQitemZ9743071262QQcategoryZ73837QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

[QUOTE=Dj Yoshi]Get just a LITTLE bit more and get a Toshiba Gigabeat S. It'll be worth your money--just came out, and it's proclaimed to be even better than the iPod as far as overall goes, and the interface supposedly rocks. I think CNet has a review up.[/QUOTE]

While it is definitley better than the iPod and it des have a good UI, as far as an MP3 player goes, it's sound wasn't the greatest. It doesn't have a custom equalizer, it suffers from poor battery, it can't play DivX movies (and a variety of other codecs), it can only play WMV 9 video, and has a few other limitations. Here's the review...

http://www.anythingbutipod.com/archives/2006/06/toshiba-gigabeat-s30-s60-review.php

I suggest you get the Creative Zen Vision: M. At the Consumer Electronic Show it blew away the competition and got BEST MP3 PLAYER and BEST OF SHOW.

Great battery life, many movie codecs, nice UI, custom equalizer, and so much more. Besides the sound is a lot better than the toshiba. As an MP3 player the Creative sound is excellent, and the video is pretty good. I must say it does have a little HDD lag, but other than that it is great. Here's a review:

http://www.anythingbutipod.com/archives/2006/01/creative-zen-vision-m-review.php

GR8 DEALZ ON MPTHREE PLAYRZ N ICE CUBE GAMEZ!~ SHOP HERE MONZXONIZDE!

http://forums.massassi.net/vb3/showthread.php?t=42089

Car integration? EVERY SINGLE MP3 PLAYER IN THE WORLD has as good car integration as the iPod. Its called a radio transmitter, but those suck, or a tape adapter. The hard wires can be put in for any mp3 player, too. From my experience with iPods and my friends', the break super easy. A lot of my friends love them, but they are so careful with them because they break that they can't do anything fun with them. They would never go running with them, thats too risky. Seriously, if you want a good mp3 player check out Creative, they are very difficult to break (I managed to break mine because I was stupid and opened it up... ).

But if I were you go for flash memory. I think the iPod one is all right, you could get that... But iTunes is a music nazi. There is a samsung flash player with the same memory as the ipod one.. That one looked really cool.

I think he's speaking in terms of the availability of stuff for iPods as opposed to other players. Like how they are a billion radio transmitters + chargers made for iPod dock connectors. They don't all suck, by the way. Only the really cheap ones. My Monster one works flawlessly, and as far as my stereo is concerned, sound quality equals that of any CD I'd burn from MP3s. If you have a good one and it's not working well, chances are your car radio either sucks or you're trying to use a frequency that's picking up interference from some local radio station.

I know how all the iPod stuff is easy to find, but actually most of the ipod stuff made by other companies will work with other mp3 players, as long as it doesn't take advantage of its dock connector thingy. But there ARE more accessories for other mp3 players, because those accessories will work with more mp3 players than just iPods, so it takes up a larger portion of the market than just iPod specific accessories.

Dock connector isn't the only proprietary thing that makes a lot of iPod accessories specific to iPods. You also have the proprietary connector right beside the line out.

And you'd be surprised just how large the iPod specific market is compared to universal things.

Just look at Amazon's selection of FM transmitters and see how many use some form of proprietary iPod connection...
http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_pg_1/103-1369066-1891824?%5Fencoding=UTF8&rh=n%3A493964%2Cn%3A281407%2Cn%3A172532%2Cn%3A172624%2Cn%3A290438%2Cn%3A15379731&page=1

I can see where you are coming from, but it doesn't make the iPod better than other things. Accessories shouldn't affect his descision, there's plenty of them for all types of mp3 players, including ipods.

Where did I say it was better because of all of its accessories? I was just pointing out that it has a very large amount of available accessories.

Now, myself, I prefer stuff like the dock connector where I can have a charger and a transmitter all in one unit that uses one cord. Don't really get that with stuff that has to use a line out connection.

just steal one, its way way way cheaper than $275.

I managed to get a Philips MP3 player with a 20 gig HD with that kind of budget. >.>;;

1) I would never, ever, trust a site called "Anything But ****" unless it was Anything But Suck. When you start out with a bias, that bodes not well for your reviews.

2) The Creative Zen Vision has poor video quality, worse than the iPod I hear, the screen's not that large, the UI is HORRIBLE, and the equalizer is bad. The battery life is okay, but the thing is also bigger than any other comparable player. When compared to the Gigabeat S...there is no comparison.

3) Creative gets a lot of awards. Not necessarily because it's the best player, mostly just because it's the closest to the iPod and people want to give the iPod some competition.

http://reviews.cnet.com/Toshiba_Gigabeat_S_MES30VW_30GB_white/4505-6499_7-31660763.html
12 hour battery life? Hardly atrocious. You couldn't use that up in a day. Not to mention its integration with XP (the only downside is that you HAVE to have XP to interface with this thing) allows for easy trasnfer for all of your files, from what I understand. They also say the video side of the player is about 2.5 hours of battery life, but they said that they were able to watch a 90 minute movie twice, then a 50 minute thing. That's almost four hours, which is really impressive for video. True, you don't get DivX, but that could be fixed with a firmware upgrade. It's not a huge deal, and I wouldn't put it beyond Toshiba to do that, in any way shape or form.

Personally, I think you should go for that. It's like 240 at radio shack (the links down there that tell you where you can buy it, like 244 with shipping or something), and that's a great deal on the player.

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2282800

Buy one off of eBay. You get it cheaper and you get to put masking tape on it, and write silly things on it in Sharpie marker.

Yeah, only if you want to risk it being defective and/or a fake.

I've never used it, but it's cheap and holds a-lot of songs.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000C1AVZ6/sr=1-12/qid=1144201881/ref=sr_1_12/103-1127883-1855048?%5Fencoding=UTF8&s=electronics

If you're a student, you can get an engraved iPod video for around $285 with tax and free shipping.

'Course, I will probably get soundly beaten for suggesting an iPod, but you can easily get music on and off of it with programs other than iTunes.

http://www.apple.com/students/

The only one I know of is the winamp plugin, and you can't move anything but music with that. So if you wanted movies/other data on there you'd have to use iTunes, or set it up as a HDD.

Also, 285 is STILL expensive for a 30gb player. Most players at 30gb are now 240-250. Not to mention it's over his budget in the first place.

[QUOTE=Dj Yoshi]Yeah, only if you want to risk it being defective and/or a fake.[/QUOTE]
I was joking. I'm not suggesting anyone do what I did and go to ebay. That was stupid on my part. But I'm content with it (**** you yoshi, it's been over a month and I like it) since it carries all the music I want to take with me, even if it is a tad limited.

I didn't say you weren't.

Times like these I wish I kept logs of my MSN conversations. You told me I'd regret buying the MP3 player, and would rather have used the money for the computer. I admit to paying a bit much, but I'm content with it.

It was you'd regret buying it over eBay. Which, if I'm not mistaken, your MP3 player is quite defective, so the only way you'd not regret it is if you just like defective things.

If by defective you mean "Plays my music just fine, exactly like I wanted, even if getting music on to it is a bit slow and doesn't have an amazing battery life, but sufficient" means defective then..yes. My MP3 player is defective.

If by defective you mean "Doesn't play music, it's a worthless piece of crap" then you happen to be wrong.

I mean "isn't what you paid for". Which, unless I'm mistaken, is more than true.

Hmm ok heres something. I hate mp3 players. They suck. They break easily. They are touchy. I would suggest going for something small, super durable, and flash memory. I've gotten over not having a hard drive, at least mine is practically indestructable. Its just some generic mp3 player I got at costco, but its better than having to worry about a hard drive. That was the downside to my old mp3 player. I had to be too careful with it, it was heavy, and I couldn't do much with it. I like the freedom of the one I have, and its very reliable.

[QUOTE=Double Helix]From my experience with iPods and my friends', the break super easy. A lot of my friends love them, but they are so careful with them because they break that they can't do anything fun with them. They would never go running with them, thats too risky.[/QUOTE]I don't know, I've had mine (3rd gen 20 gig) for about two and a half years now, and it's taken a LOT of abuse and it still works perfectly. Sure, the battery doesn't last for more than an hour, but it still functions as good as it did out of the box.

Hey guys, I got a few extra bucks for working extra hours at work, so I'm gonna go with the Creative Labs Zen Vision: M, in black color of course, unless anyone has a better suggestion for me. Thanks guys, I appreciate it.

You should've taken the orchestra.

My brother purchased one of those, very nice.

.

I second Yoshi's Iaudio X5 suggestion. More specifically, the X5L.

I got it for $300 at buydig.com

[QUOTE=Double Helix]Car integration? EVERY SINGLE MP3 PLAYER IN THE WORLD has as good car integration as the iPod. Its called a radio transmitter, but those suck, or a tape adapter. The hard wires can be put in for any mp3 player, too.[/QUOTE]

No.

I've got a Pioneer Head Unit in my car with the Pioneer iPod Adaptor. It charges the iPod, plays the audio through the car, shows the track name on the head unit's screen, and allows me to change tracks with the controls on the head unit as if it were a CD.

Most other after-market and factory car stereos have an iPod specific adaptor like that available.

[QUOTE=Double Helix]I can see where you are coming from, but it doesn't make the iPod better than other things. Accessories shouldn't affect his descision, there's plenty of them for all types of mp3 players, including ipods.[/QUOTE]

I guess it depends on what you're getting it for. I've got a 60gb iPod Photo, and it is always either in my car or inside getting new music. I VERY RARELY use it as a portable. So for me I wanted what was going to integrate the best with my car, so I didn't have to keep a 200 cd case in the car and search through it while driving to find the one cd I'm looking for...

I have another question, what will I need to hook the Zen to to a Pioneer Car Stereo (a new one, which I will also be buying?)

This http://www.crutchfield.com/S-7z13tlFVUp2/cgi-bin/ProdView.asp?g=227550&I=130CDRB10

and this
http://www.crutchfield.com/S-7z13tlFVUp2/cgi-bin/ProdView.asp?i=043183190

Why not buy a stereo with an aux in (miniplug) on the front faceplate? That's what my radio has, and it's insanely handy. Plus, no funky wiring or dangling cables to deal with.