AA battery powered mp3 player?

"Nonetheless . . . it didn’t slow down their sales any. The fact that the Pod is #1 in the market year after year implies that the majority of people want smaller, thinner devices and don’t really care that much about battery life, whether the battery is standard or even replaceable at all. They just want their tunes . . . at any price. "

It shows that many people are foolish, and don’t think about the longer term. Think about how many people buy a printer without finding out which ink or toner cartridge it takes, and what the cost per page for ink or toner is.

JK98 wrote:

"Nonetheless . . . it didn’t slow down their sales any. The fact that the Pod is #1 in the market year after year implies that the majority of people want smaller, thinner devices and don’t really care that much about battery life, whether the battery is standard or even replaceable at all. They just want their tunes . . . at any price. "

 

It shows that many people are foolish , and don’t think about the longer term. Think about how many people buy a printer without finding out which ink or toner cartridge it takes, and what the cost per page for ink or toner is.

That too. :smileyvery-happy:

Still can’t charge anything when in an electricity free part of the world – and there are a lot of them!  A single AAA is light,lasts for ages,and is easy to carry into (and carry out again if used) any part of the world that has neither available power or suitable waste disposal systems.

No one is saying all MP3s need to be operate with disposable batteries but there is certainly a niche requirement and it could probably stand a certain surcharge on purchase. For me just something to deal with music – no bells and whistles, just reliable, functional and a wee bit sturdy!

"Still can’t charge anything when in an electricity free part of the world "

There are solar USB chargers, and chargers that operate with a crank. There are USB chargers that run on AA batteries, so you could get one of those with a voltage regulator, and get a solar or crank AA nimh battery charger.

If you want a AAA battery based player, there are the Slotmusic player and Slotradio To Go player from Sandisk. They have no display though, and sound quality is worse than on the Clip+ or Fuze.

I just signed up to also voice my support for an AA powered mp3 player, preferably with a memory card slot.

Why?  I want to be able to throw the player and a few spare AA batteries in my bag.  This gets even more important when I go on a trip with multiple devices that use AA batteries, like my gps and headlamp.  In this case, the spare batteries work for everything instead of only one device, and the batteries in each of these devices can also serve as spares for the other devices.

It’s unlikely that I’ll buy another Sansa mp3 player, or any standalone mp3 player, unless it runs off an AA battery with the potential for lots of storage.

Of course these external packs that take 4 AA batteries are bulky, and one must also carry a USB cable to use one. It would be much easier to carry a spare AA battery or two and a player that uses a AA battery, rather than a player with a built in battery, an external battery pack, and a USB cable.

There are lion battery based usb chargers, however I haven’t seen any that use an easily swappable battery. A usb charger that uses an easily swappable 18650 battery would be cool.

Message Edited by JK98 on 02-08-2010 09:00 PM

Check out the C.Crane Co. at ccrane.com They have a portable MP3 player with an AM/FM radio they call the CC Witness. This is the only one that I know that exists at this time.

The Witness is ridiculous. It is over $168 for a 2 GB player. Besides which, the Fuze seems like a much better player than the Witness(aside from the fact that the Fuze doesn’t have AM radio). At over 3 times the price for a 2GB Fuze, imo the Witness is grossly overpriced.

@jk98 wrote:
 Besides which, the Fuze seems like a much better player than the Witness(aside from the fact that the Fuze doesn’t have AM radio). At over 3 times the price for a 2GB Fuze, imo the Witness is grossly overpriced.

Other features the Witness has over fuze:

  1. Stereo input for recording
  1. record at “normal” sample frequency (44.1 kHz) and mp3 encoding.
  1. extra memory slot is SDHC instead of microSDHC (bigger and cheaper memory available)
  1. record on timer
  1. clock radio functions
  1. record from radio (isn’t Fuze just mono from the microphone?) 
  1. built in speakers

 

Missing: video

 

 

The Fuze does have FM recording in stereo. The Fuze is listed as having 24 hours of battery life vs 16 hours for the Witness. The Witness is twice as thick as the Fuze. The Fuze does lack a line/mic input, and timer recording. The Witness is listed as having just 85 db S/N for mp3.

http://www.ccrane.com/radios/am-fm-radios/cc-witness.aspx

One can buy a Sony SRF-59 AM/FM radio for just $15. It gets 140 hours on AM, or 100 hours on FM on just one AA alkaline battery(or you could use an nimh rechargeable). A  2 GB Fuze plus a Sony SRF-59 radio is less than half the price of the Witness.

Message Edited by JK98 on 03-21-2010 02:50 PM

I started this thread more than a year and a half ago, and since then we have still not seen any new AA battery powered players, or even any players with an easily swappable lithium based battery. UGH!

Message Edited by JK98 on 04-27-2010 07:18 PM

JK98 wrote:
I started this thread more than a year a half ago, and since then we have still not seen any new AA battery powered players, or even any players with an easily swappable lithium based battery. UGH!

Are you forgetting the Slotmusic player? Or did that run on AAA’s? :wink:

The Slotmusic and Slotradio To Go players use a AAA battery. In my mind they really don’t count anyway since they don’t have a display, and their sound quality is much lower than that of the Clip+ or Fuze.

Message Edited by JK98 on 04-27-2010 07:21 PM

JK98 wrote:
I started this thread more than a year a half ago, and since then we have still not seen any new AA battery powered players, or even any players with an easily swappable lithium based battery. UGH!

I also very much want a no-frills AA battery powered mp3 player.  It’s an absolute no-brainer for me.  I like to take music on hiking trips, and Lithium Ion batteries can’t maintain a charge at all in cool to cold weather.

The last time I took one out with me, it lasted about 5 days before dying - along with my lithium ion powered camera - and even though I had a recharge pack with me, the Lithium Ion just couldn’t be revived effectively til I got back to the city.  Ask any nature photographer with lithium ion powered cameras, they’ll tell you about strapping batteries to their body to keep them warm enough to maintain a charge.  I’m not talking subzero temps even, but late summer in the high Sierra. 

I’ve since bought a AA battery powered camera, but can’t find a high capacity mp3 player to match.  I just want a player to play music, nothing more.  I don’t need a fancy color display or video.  But an AM radio would be a great addition to tune into weather reports. 

battery is fine. I would prefer triple AAA to AA though, much lighter. And one can always bring a couple of spare AAA’s for extended battery life (e.g. few days hike), instead of AA or the internal integrated battery. AAA clip-on would be also nice.

The highest capacity AA nimh batteries hold around 3x the power of the highest capacity AAA nimh batteries.

doesn’t matter, the AAA’s last long enough and you can always bring some spare ones if you can’t recharge on a few-day’s-hike (that’s also when a clip-on battery pack would come in handy)

BUT

for every-day use, there is no sense in unnecessarily increasing the player’s weight.

The best and longest lasting batteries on the market are the eneloop batteries by Sanyo.

AA: 2000 mAh, 27 grams
AAA: 800 mAh, 12 grams

If you divide 800mAh by 12 and multiply by 27, you get 1800mAh , so taking into account its size, the AAA has only a little less performance, but for every-day use it saves more than half of the battery weight.

Message Edited by Chris_Davideck on 07-09-2010 08:51 AM

@chris_davideck wrote:

for every-day use, there is no sense in unnecessarily increasing the player’s weight.
>blockquote>

A judgement call. One could just as well say no sense in reducing the play time by more than half just for a few grams. Plus that gives compatibility with a lot of other gadgets that use AA batteries like cameras, small flashlights, etc.

The best and longest lasting batteries on the market are the eneloop batteries by Sanyo.

AA: 2000 mAh, 27 grams
AAA: 800 mAh, 12 grams

3000 mah for standard NiMH are easy to find. For low self discharge ones, the best are around 2400 mah.

“The best and longest lasting batteries on the market are the eneloop batteries by Sanyo. AA: 2000 mAh, 27 grams AAA: 800 mAh, 12 grams”

Sanyo makes 2700 mah AA nimh rechargeable batteries and 1000 mah AAA nimh rechargeable batteries. While other manufacturers claim higher capacities, I have not seen any other nimh batteries that have played longer in tests. For AA nimh batteries, major manufacturers only make them up to 2900 mah. The test results I have seen show the 2700 mah Sanyo batteries beating the 2900 mah batteries of other makers.

The low discharge rate nimh batteries are  better suited for infrequently used devices. For frequently used items, the regular higher capacity nimh batteries are much better. The low discharge nimh batteries also need to be charged slower than standard nimh batteries(so no charging of the low discharge ones in an hour or less, and perhaps not even in under 2 hours?). The low discharge ones are also worse at putting out higher power levels(ie. when used in the the Tekkeon mp1550 to charge an mp3 player, they took longer than traditional nimh batteries).

As for the AAA vs AA argument, I would prefer AA, as for example run time might be 40 hours with AA or 15 hours with AAA. While spares can be carried with each, for some people it might mean carrying 2 or more spares when using AAA batteries. Most cargers charge up to 4 batteries at a time, and with AAA batteries, around 11 might be needed to be equivalent to 4 AA. The 11 batteries would mean 3 charge charge cycles for most people, vs just one charge cycle for the AA batteries.