I’ve been looking for an excellent sounding, ogg supported, SDHC or micro SDHC expandable AAA or AA powered mp3 player, for the last 4 months. To satisfy my curiosity, I spent a little over a few hundred dollars on various “inexpensive” AAA powered mp3 players. There were a few AA powered ones out there, but the features were basically the same. For my purposes, the result is 100% of them did not meet my criteria.
Fortunately, with the holidays I gave most of them away, so this project of mine wasn’t a total loss.
I did find two players that came close to what I was looking for.
The best sounding, (rivals Sansa Fuze(R) imo), is the discontinued Sony(R) MyMusix PD-205. It took alot of research to find all the firmware updates which give it folder support and save settings feature. There is no onboard memory or fm radio and plays by SD card only. Fortunately, Transcend(R) makes 4GB SD cards. If this player had one user preset feature, played ogg, and supported SDHC cards it would hit 100%. I get 11 hours playtime with a Sanyo(R) 1000 mah NiHm, and 8 hours with a Sanyo(R) Eneloop 800 mah NiHM.
The most functional is the TrekStor(R) i.Beat xtension[FM]. The sound quality is not as good as the above, and all the Sansa(R) models I own. However it reads SDHC cards, and currently I am using 8GB cards. I do not see why it wouldn’t read a 16GB or 32GB card. The menu takes some practice, but is functional. It can record from fm and voice, and plugs directly in an usb port. If this player had one user preset feature and played ogg it would hit 100%. The above AAA power gets around 8 hours and 6 hours respectively.
I have posted to this forum since September 2008 and sort of made a promise to myself I wouldn’t name other brands out of respect to SanDisk(R) as this is their sight. It is out of respect to SanDisk I did. IMO, a company will produce a player like these in the future. It is just a matter of time. It might as well be SanDisk(R). They have started with the Slot player and will hopefully take it to the next level.
Some people move from home to home, job to job etc. and some people like to stay put. I fall in to the stay put’s. I don’t want to throw away a battery operated item because the battery died. Does it have a useful life expectency? Of course! But let it die a natural death, not because you can’t change out something so simple as a battery.
Happy New Year!
