[IceFire]

So after almost 4 years of outstanding service my Zen Micro 5GB (hard drive based) MP3 player is beginning to die out.  Original battery too ...so I guess it doesn't owe me anything.

So at some point I'm going to probably want to have a new Mp3 player to replace it.  I don't want to start any arguments on iPod versus non-iPod but I'm pretty positive that I won't buy an iPod. No need to go into it...suffice to say that I recognize what they are good at and want something different.

So far I've considered the Zune 8GB, Creative Zen X-fi, Creative Zen Mosaic, the Sansa, and a couple from Samsung.  Not sure what to make of my options.  Anyone have any good or bad experiences or suggestions?  Much appreciated.

[NGTM-1R]

Sansa, specifically the Fuze.

The thing has nearly neverending battery life. I have yet to have the batteries fully run down at this point despite what amounts to about (conservatively, the truth is it hasn't been recharged for two weeks or more) 72+ hours of listening time. (Perversely, the last 48 have been spent on what it appears to believe is "almost no battery left".) If you have to go longer than that between recharges you're pretty screwed anyways and might as well get a CD player that can play burned MP3s so you can change the batteries.

[colecampbell666]

My friend ha a Samsung touchscreen model with BlueTooth, it's 16GB and has pretty good battery IIRC. Samsung P2.

[Roanoke]

isn't your phone capable of playing mp3 or similar ?

[Unknown Target]

I agree, Sansa makes great players.

[Rick James]

The Creative Zen Vision:M. Support for multiple video formats, plus .ogg and .wma files.

[SPARTAN-367]

I have my old Sansa e280 8.0 GB still ... and I still love the damn thing and it still works.

My Sansa: http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1175/1422981593_bfa9064a75.jpg

[colecampbell666]

My sister's e270 has no battery life.

[Jeff Vader]

My Zen V's battery lasted ~10 hours in its prime. Today, less. Also, the play/pause button doesn't click anymore, which doesn't ruin my life, but makes it difficult to determine whether it registered the push or not. (of course I know it registered the push once the playback starts, but it is annoying to wait when the beginning of the song has a silent-ish part.)

[Black Wolf]

Be careful with the current crop of Zens. They claim support for standard SD cards (which was the reason I bought one), and do technically deliver in that you can load your music onto an SD card and insert it into the machine, but it's very shoddily integrated compared to the on-board storage - it's completely non-integrated with the on-board storage (so no shuffle between on-board and SD) no playlists, slow loads, no capability to leave the song playing while you look through other stuff, no song memory if it goes into power save mode and (oddest of all) no nested folders. Not that you'd want them though, because random only works within a single folder at a time (doesn't read subfolders or other folders on the SD card).

The most annoying part is that all of these features are available on the standard, on-board flash memory, so it's capable of doing everything I want it to do from the SD, but for some reason has been hamstrung. I can kinda see a technical reason for doing it (I'd imagin loading via SD is never going to be as quick as taking stuffdirectly from soldered-on flash memory) but I suspect a big chunk of the reason is to discourage people from doing what I did - buying a cheap, low capacity model and then expecting to be able to use a SD card as the main storage, cheaply and significantly upgrading the storage. Otherwise, it's a great player and I'd willingly buy one again - just not one I intended to use an SD card with.

[IceFire]

isn't your phone capable of playing mp3 or similar ?

Until last week I didn't even have a cell phone.  The phone I do have is intended to be for talking and texting only.  I like to have purpose built devices that are meant to do what they do.  My MP3 player is meant for multi-hour battery draining extravaganzas while I work hard on something at work and need outside noise to go away (or while driving longer distances) while the phone is meant to be on standby for days on end.  So ...the phone isn't a solution for me.  Good idea tho...I'm sure some like it that way.

Sounds like an interesting crop of suggestions. I will check them out.

What about the Zune? Any experiences positive or negative?  A friend of mine says his is neigh indestructible and sounds great.

[haloboy100]

I vote for the Cowon. I've had my Cowon D2 for a year and a half, and it only isn't working because I've treated it horribly. It lasts 50 hours on audio alone, though, which is a definite plus for me.

The D2 is the cheapest model (retail 150 bucks), but it still packed with features like SD support, massive compatibility for both video and audio, and skin customizability if you download the patches. (www.iaudiophile.net)
It also has FM radio, a cool equalizer and this thing called JetAudio, which enhances your audio in different ways, such as clearer sound and enhanced bass. It can also play flash files, albeit not some of them very well since it doesn't run on windows (at least, that's my hypothosis). The flash player plays Bowman well enough, though, so I'm satisfied

Right now I'm saving up for a Cowon Q5, which is essentially a stripped-down pocket PC that plays music.

One thing I do admit about the Cowon is the apparent lack of durability; all I ever did to my D2 was drop it several times, and the USB output to the computer is completely busted, so I am unable to transfer anything on to it now. This may sound bad on me, but compare this too my friends iPod mini, who I've seen get run over by a car, dropped, stepped on by my heel, and thrown, and it works perfectly fine.

However, the greatest feature I found about the D2 is not even mentioned: it functions as a perfectly functional USB drive. I use it to transfer homework between here and school, and you can put anything anywhere in the device and it won't affect functionality at all. To put on music, video, pictures, or text files (all of it it reads), simply cut and paste the files. You can also set it to be either MSP or MTP compatible, in case you want it to be read by the computer as an actual music player rather than a flash drive (which it detects as otherwise). You can also fully modify an SD card using the Cowon, as the card registers as an entirely separate drive altogether.

[achtung]

I've got a sansa Fuze, and I love it.  It can play ogg vorbis files, with the latest firmware upgrades, which was a huge plus for me.  Battery life is nice, and even nicer if you turn down the screen brightness.

[darkone]

I bought a Sansa 8GB for my daughter and works great and it even has a memory card slot to make it bigger

[Titan]

I have this really nice one I got for Christmas from Nextar. Parents bought it for between $30-$40 bucks. I have the 4gig one. Really nice, can use E-books, has a crystal clear FM-radio receiver, and a microphone that actually works. Only problem I have is it works in folders, so if you have a bunch of albums from the same artist, you can either put them all in one folder and just put it on 'random-folder' or organize it by /artistfolder/albumfolder/, put it on 'normal' play mode (plays everything in order that they're on it) or 'random-and-repeat-all', which will grab any song from anywhere on it, which is annoying if you're listening to journey and weird al yankovic comes on.
EDIT: GAH! forgot the link: Here is the page for it on their site

[kode]

I've had a sandisk sansa e200 series (which I sold) and currently have a cowon d2. They have both satisfied my needs. The former supports rockbox, which was pretty nice (and it's basically how I got it sold in the first place, I sorta liked it, sure, both well).

Not that I really use many of the "features", but I like the D2 because of it's phenomenally long times between recharges (the 52 hours they claim might even be true). I've an 8GB model and got myself another 8GB by getting an SDHC card for it. It plays FLAC and ogg and so on too. In short, it is awesome for just that. The features I don't use is it's flash player and video player and so on, but I'm sure those work satisfactory too. It has a touch screen for some reason, but iI guess the UI is okay regardless., rockbox might have a hard time supporting it though, and that might be a con :/