Ok, I've had an IPAQ 2210 which was great for playing music/backing up my camera to another memory card etc etc which is now broken. I've got loads of time in my new job with little todo (night shifts) and was looking at what I could get to replace it. I like the Idea of another IPAQ2210 but at the moment I'm not prepared to spend that much money, I'm not too fussed about a screen and not sure if a 1gb IPOD would be enough as an mp3 player as I've never had one.

What are you're experiences with IPODS and which ones are any good for normal mp3 usage and connecting into the car?

All comments welcome (well most of them )

Until recently I was a member of the anti iPod brigade. I always used to stick to the other brands like iRiver, creative and the like.

I decided to take the plunge and get an iPod touch 16GB after repeated failures and replacements of a creative zen vision M (it was crap). To be fair, SWMBO bought it as a birthday present so she got me the touch as a replacement. A good returns service by Amazon I hasten to add

I've had it since last October and it hasn't put a foot wrong. It never crashes or hangs so is very relaible. The UI is very easy to use and is intuitive.

The only thing I don't like is the AAC format as it's a pain if I want to stream from the laptop to the PS3 but that's not relevant here.

As they are probably the most popular brand of portable player they have the most accessories available making the connection to the car much easier. I have mine hooked up to my MFD2 via the A/V lead so music and video can be fed to the unit. There are such things as Dension ICE links available but I have no experience of them.

iTunes is pretty easy to use as well, there are loads of free podcasts available.

As for the memory capacity, I have about 2 gig free on my 16GB touch and I often shuffle the songs on it (about 1600 tracks) I would opt for more than 1GB if you want a decent amount of music to shuffle through. Bear in mind I have a few video podcasts taking up space as well.

As you are talking 'not much money' & 1GB, I guess you are looking at a Shuffle. The Shuffle is a good player if it's just for listening to of a nightshift but it doesn't have the big connector on the bottom that the other iPods have & that most of the accessories make use of.

The iPod touch mentioned above is a fantastic thing but it's £199 min.

In your position I would go for an iPod Nano 4GB @ £99. You get a screen (meaning you can easily choose songs & watch the occasional video), accessory connector for car kit etc & 4Gb is enough to give a reasonable selection of songs without having to keep swapping back/forth on the computer too often.

HTH

If you've never had an ipod, is there a particular reason you're looking at that over another manufacturer's offerings? Do you already use itunes?

It's always worth keeping an eye open on the other products. I refuse to have an ipod because I refuse to be forced into using itunes to transcode all my music to aac and have to use the same application to transfer it to the player. AFAIK, there's no alternative to transferring music to/from an ipod. Please correct me if I'm wrong

I know I work for the company ( ) but I'm very happy with the Sony MWZ-A818 8GB mp3/video player as it allows me to use normal MTP (media transfer protocol) or drag and drop mp3s from windows explorer straight onto the device which can appear as a mass storage device, just like any other USB key.

Plays back video, albeit on it's smallish 2 inch QVGA screen. But it's solidly built, has fantastic audio quality (should you give it very low compressed mp3s) and just works.

Oh and the 8GB version can be had for less than £100 new

If you alreay have an apple and use itunes, then an ipod is the sensible option but if you don't, then you're forcing yourself down one proprietary format and vendor for all time to come

edit: put another way, if I was going to be spending around £200 on an audio player, I'd much prefer going for a PDA (Ipaq or other) as it will be infinately more flexible and usable than a mere audio player. You can use external SD cards or whichever format it takes and carry around multiples of 4GB's worth of music / video with you

If you've ... with you

You don't have to use AAC on the iPod, MP3 works just fine, although I think you're right about having to use iTunes. You can also use the iPod as a USB drive & even load music onto it as you described, but you can then only listen to the music via a computer rather than the headphone socket. I believe this was something Apple had to agree to as an anti-piracy measure in order to gain co-operation from the music industry to launch the iTunes store.

I'm thinking about one of these

Sumvision ICE 1000 Touch Screen Media Player - 8GB - TrustedReviews

8Gb MP3 and video player for £59 http://www.advancedmp3players.co.uk/shop/MP3_Players.1/Sumvision.137/ICE1000-8GB/Sumvision_Ice_1000_8GB_Touch_Screen_MP3_Player.3081.html

Or the Sandisk Sansa. SWMBO has an ipod but it's been a lot of hassle.

It's always worth keeping an eye open on the other products. I refuse to have an ipod because I refuse to be forced into using itunes to transcode all my music to aac and have to use the same application to transfer it to the player. AFAIK, there's no alternative to transferring music to/from an ipod. Please correct me if I'm wrong

Your wrong :P:D

HTH

You don't have to use AAC, which isn't an Apple proprietary format like some manufacturers like Sony use... :P iPod's will play mp3's quite happily with no pressure to use any other format, I believe there are alternatives to iTunes but as I like it I've never bothered to try anything else but I'm sure some of the other Brisky members have.

I used to love my Sony NetMD, the hardware was brilliant but sadly it was massively let down by the rubbish software :( which I finally got fed up with and thats when I made the switch to an iPod. Over 2 years on and I've nearly filled my 20Gb and I'm looking at an 80Gb Classic or 32Gb Touch but they're not cheap :eek:

Hello!

I've got an original 1gb Shuffle and a 8gb 2nd gen Nano. Both are really good. I never got on with the idea of having to use iTunes but its a small price to pay to have players that are so easy to use. Minor niggles are I don't agree with some of the auto save choices it makes to do with multiple artists on the same song or compilation cds and the online store screen is a bit crowded but then I don't buy anything as I only take music off cds. My girlfriends gets by using it but her parents (in their 60') struggle to understand how it all works but can eventually get a cd to auto import and then I set their 3rd gen nano to auto sync with their music library.

I only save my songs at 64k so can get about 500 songs per gb of space. All my songs are mp3 format too. I had 11 hours play time out of the shuffle the other day from a 4 hour charge. It cost me £89 a couple of years ago after it'd been out a while. The new shape one can now be got in a 2gb version for about £45 or something!

I think the original shuffle still looks cool and the newer one a bit girly. It can also be used directly as a usb stick whereas the new one needs a cable. I never had an issue with not being able to choose a particular song as it was always filled with songs off albums I liked. The new nano looks a bit dumpy too me and as my inlaws found out it sits a bit low in some of the docks thats have been out a while compared to 2nd gen nano. That makes the scroll wheel a bit arkward to use - although you'd probably get a remote to use anyway.

The Touch's are a bit pricey but so nice to use. Plus you get the bigger screen than the nano for video use. If I had the money and was in the market for a new phone I'd have a tough decision to make between the iPhone and the Touch with a seperate phone....

Apple are selling refurb 4GB Nano's for £85 'while stocks last'

See here

I've got a new Ipaq114 - great little machine. Has wifi so handy for free surfing on the train and I've bunged a 8gb SDHC card in for loads of storage. I got mine for good price when they first came out as HP wasn't sure what to charge for them! But the are now about £170 IIRC.

@ tfboy, I don't bother with the AAC, I converted all my music to mp3 myself, leave them in a folder and then import folder to itunes. I gather a few people have a folder with their music and then another folder with what itunes converted it to.

OK, I admit saying you *had* to use AAC was a fatal error on my behalf. Me bad

Still having to use itunes is as much of a turn off as anything else. I suppose if you're already using it, it makes sense

Thanks guys. I think I'm going togo and look at going down the PDA route again. The IPOD was just a thought nice and small and potentially cheap (£30-£50 range) but all I could do would be listen to music where-as the IPAQ would allow me so much more funtionality.