AA battery powered mp3 player?

Ah, marketing  …

The thing that catches my eye is the little “powered by eneloop technology” badge in the upper left. Eneloops are widely regarded as among the best rechargeable batteries, so if these are amped-up Eneloops, they ought to be great. Ridiculous “eXXtreme” labelling aside.

The extreme label is to justify the extreme price. :slight_smile: $23.45 for a 4 pack? I don’t like to pay more than $10 for a 4 pack of AA nimh batteries. Ideally I would like to pay $7 or less. The regular Eneloops are only around $10 for a 4 pack. Is it worth paying over double the price for 25% more capacity? I don’t think so.

True, the price is a bit steep. But once they’re more plentiful, hopefully we should be able to find them at a decent discount.

I noticed B&H Photo is taking orders for them at $19.95.  A bit cheaper than the Amazon price, but still not cheap. I guess eventually it will be under $15. B&H has the new Eneloop 1500, AA nimh 2000mah batteries chargeable 1500 times 4 pack for $10. At half the price of the 2500 mah, I would rather have the 2000mah ones.

I’m still hoping for a player like this.

At around $200 the Yamaha C24 is too expensive. I was looking at the Olympus ws700m which is only around $75. It has no tag browsing though. The ws710m has FM radio and more built in memory(8GB vs 4GB) but is around $110. These also sort files by date, rather than by title name or track number.

The Sony recorders ICD-PX312, ICD-AX412 and ICD-UX512 use AAA batteries and have a microSDHC card slot. These only support files up to 192kbps, but do support variable bitrate files. The PX312 has a mono mic, while the others have a stereo mic. I don’t know how well  these recorders work as players. I assume there is no tag browsing, only browsing by folders.

Try an Olympus digital voice recorder such as the Olympus WS-803 Voice Recorder. It (and the similar models) has a built in music player. The Olympus web site actually has a list of their voice recorder with built-in music players. It has a built-in FM radio. It runs 27 hours [claimed] on 1 AAA battery, it has a lcd screen, it uses a micro-sd card up to 32gb, it has a pop-out USB connection, and if you install a nickel-metal-hydride battery it will recharge the battery through the USB port. It’s not too bulky either, only 1.6" x 3.9" x .6". One big advantage for me is the large controls. I often have a hard time with the tiny controls on many MP3 players. Does not remember bookmarks though. :frowning:

I hope this is helpful.

The WS-803 and WS-802 seem to have the same issues as older WS-700. There is no tag browsing, and getting the files to play in the order you want(ie. playing an album of songs in the correct order) may be an issue.

I use my Sandisk Clip+ with a Tekkeon mp1550(the newer model is mp1580) which lets me charge the player several times from 4AA nimh batteries. If the WS-802 had tag browsing I probably would have bought it already. You can download the manual for it on the Olympus website.

Not for everyone on this…  Absolutely a player that would run on AAA batteries is much much better.   Why dont they do this?  Simple. Because they wouldn’t be selling as many!   It’s like power drills.  They used to sell coorded ones with a built in clutch (you know the 1-20 settings), but they stopped and only offer them in the coordless version.  Why?  Because they wont sell the cordless ones as often if the clutch was on the reliable coorded one.   It’s the same thing here;  you no AAA’s because people would use the same player for 10 years.  Cant do that with the lithium, polymer, whatever batteries…  Plus there are lots of issues with charging these things…  How much do you drain the battery first?, do you do incorrectly? if so, your battery goes bad a lot faster…  That’s what happens with players.   if you need a player that runs on batteries (AAA) and uses a SD card, I heard you should get a portable voice recorder with a play function!

I still want a AA battery powered mp3 player with a card slot!

AA battery players abandoned long ago, likely as too bulky a power source for current engineering advances.

AA batteries aren’t so bulky, especially when used one at a time. For a larger player, an easily swappable 18650 lithium ion battery would be good. It is less than twice the volume of a AA battery, but has over triple the power of  a AA nimh rechargeable battery.

Can’t fit an AA in a Clip . . . .     :wink:

One could make a clip on player that takes a AA battery. Or if they are so obsessed about size, they could make one that uses a AAA battery. There is room for a model that uses a AA battery, and for a model that uses a AAA battery.

Yes, indeedy, many things can be done.  ;)    But whether consumers want those form factors is another matter, in this age of (Apple) micro-ism.

On of my friends just bought a Sandisk Clip+. His first comment was a complaint that the player is too small. I asked him a few days later how he is enjoying the player, and he said he can’t find it. Having a player that is somewhat larger is a good thing. Not only can the display be larger, but the player wouldn’t be as easy to misplace. I like the Clip Sport form factor much better than that of the Clip+ and Clip Zip, however i would prefer a player that is even slightly larger than the Clip Sport that is still a clip on one, which has an even larger display and even more battery life.

When the first portable transistor radio was made, they tried to make it fit in a shirt pocket, but still couldn’t get it to fit in a standard shirt pocket. Their solution was to cheat a bit, and make a shirt with an extra large pocket, and have the radio shown going into the shirt pocket. Imo the paradigm of portable music fitting into a shirt pocket is still relevant today, although since most are listening using earphones, so there should be room in the pocket for earphones as well. Having a player be as small as the Clip+ is , seems somewhat couterproductive, as it means skimping on battery life and display size.

Personally, I prefer the size of the Clip/Clip+/Clip Zip.  Perfect to clip onto a belt loop or pocket, and for what it is, I don’t need a larger screen the only purpose for which would be is album art.  I think SanDisk got it right–the Clip for small and the Fuze if you want bigger. 

The Fuze is gone, and the Clip has been Jammed!