AA battery powered mp3 player?

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.

@donp: a common fallacy. nominal mAh is not 1:1 equivalent to battery life in practice. Also see JK98’s comment for that matter.

Besides, you don’t get the point. There is NO reduced play time, because you can always bring spare AAA’s if you need >15 hours non-stop playback and don’t have a recharge possibility BUT on the other hand you ALWAYS carry excess weight with an AA when a single AAA (15 hours) would suffice!

In the end the AAA offers more flexibility and you get the best of both worlds: lighter player for daily usage with a single AAA and unlimited playback time for hikes/trips by bringing spare AAA’s.

http://www.rechargeable-battery-review.com/consumer-batteries/aa-battery-tests/aa-nimh-battery-performance.html

AA is obviously the more cost effective option, since AA nimh batteries hold almost triple the power of AAA ones, yet are very close in cost. That makes AA batteries have only around 1/3 the cost per mah of AAA batteries.

Doesn’t really matter in my opinion, as most users probably have other AAA devices anyway, so they would use their batteries and can re-use the SansaClip’s AAAs in those devices, too.

And for mp3 players the cost effectiveness for batteries takes a second place to the batteries’ weight. If it weren’t so, you could use your car batteries for your Sansa Clip, since they are a hundred times more cost effective.

I am not saying your arguments are not valid per se, JK98, I was just making a case for AAA batteries and think they have the better arguments (but so do you probably for AAs). After all, I think we can both agree that the most important thing would be to *have* any kind of replaceable battery at all, and maybe let’s leave it at that (until such point where SanDisk really starts to think of implementing this feature).

No further comments?

Bored again, JK?

@jk98 wrote:
No further comments?

Bored again, JK?

You’re going to hurt yourself bumping your own threads this way.

@jk98 wrote:
No further comments?

Nope–everything that needs saying has been said.   :wink: