AA battery powered mp3 player?

Just ran into this on another search for the same thing. This is not what most people would want but comes really close to me getting it.

http://www.sourcingmap.com/portable-white-music-player-tuner-sdmmc-card-compatible-built-128mb-flash-p-13253.html

Unfortunately no photo, only 1 in stock etc, not a brand name.

Takes 4 AA batteries, has an external charger, speakers, sd card, 2 alarm clock settings. 

Unfortunately nearly 8 inches long and only goes up to 8 kbps. If it went to 16 I’d get it. Most of my stuff isn’t music, just speaking and with the headphones this would be fine for travelling, at least for me. It would be nice to have a travel alarm that holds extra batteries too, a little more reliable when you have a flight to catch. It is cheap enough that with just that 16 kbps improvement they would have had me trying it out.

I agree… AA batteries are great!  They are cheap, available and last a long time.

I have an old Cowon G2 that uses ONE AA and it lasts probably 40 hrs. 

Now, after using the Fuze for nearly two years, I have no problem with the built in 

battery.  I really like the form factor of the Fuze.

My only wish now would be for the Fuze  to have a user replaceable battery.

That would be great. 

This discussion is continuing here.

http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum/showthread.php?p=429511#post429511

A Clip+ gets 12 hours of play time with a 3 hour charge. So play time is only 4x charge time. Using a player that gets 40 hours of play time on a 2900 mah AA nimh battery and a 15 minute charger that charges 4 AA nimh batteries at a time, one would get 160 hours of play time with 15 minutes of charging, and have play time that is 640 times charge time!!!

Except that 15 minute NiMH chargers abuse the cells, leading to capacity loss and premature failure. An hour is the shortest charge cycle that doesn’t damage the cells. If you’re interested in such things, there has been EXHAUSTIVE discussion of batteries over at CandlePowerForums.com - though as you might imagine, predominantly in the context of flashlights and other lighting devices.

@furrbear wrote:

Except that 15 minute NiMH chargers abuse the cells, leading to capacity loss and premature failure. An hour is the shortest charge cycle that doesn’t damage the cells. If you’re interested in such things, there has been EXHAUSTIVE discussion of batteries over at CandlePowerForums.com - though as you might imagine, predominantly in the context of flashlights and other lighting devices.

My charger happens to be a half hour one. Rotating through the same 2 pairs of AA in my camera, maybe weekly charging, I had the first cell go bad after 4 years.  My kid’s AAA’s lasted nearly 2 years of being run down to zero in her DAP before swapping, charging a couple times/week (they still worked, but around half capacity)  Both sizes got better life than most Li batteries I’ve used. 

 

Different brands of cells can be designed so they can or can’t take fast charging as well.   From reading some of the ad copy, there’s also some spin going on by MFR’s that don’t make fast smart chargers (or good fast charging batteries) to make their own gear look better.

 

     I’ve been in some groups dealing with lighting (on bikes) and they often run them until the light is too dim to use which is hard on batteries, since a slight mismatch in cells will lead to some getting reverse charge.  Electronic gear usually cuts you off when the voltage reaches some still safe level.

Message Edited by donp on 01-09-2010 09:06 AM

@tapeworm wrote:


@vidra wrote:

The advantage of rechargeable NiMH batteries are as follows:

Respectfully discussing:

  • much higher capacity. The Li-ion battery in my Fuze lasts 15-20 hours on a single charge, whereas one 2300mAh AA battery in my old i-River lasts over 40 hours, which is more than double the capacity. This was on you old i-river. How can you know what the charge/play time would be on the Sansa?

 

Fuze batteries I’ve seen for sale are 550 mah 3.7 volts.  So in total energy this NiMH is about 50% more (2.3 amphours *1.2 volts).  Note you can get higher capacity NiMH,  

I agree that for normal use the larger capacity mp3 players that I can just plug into the wall or pc are much better, however I’m about to deploy for Haiti next week and am looking for a battery operated mp3 player that I can buy to bring with me.  I really don’t care about a sleek design and just want something that I can use to listen to music while i’m there.  Since I will be in an environment where there really is no power, except for our own generators (which isn’t to be used for charging personal electronics) it really would be much easier to bring extra batteries, and not have to worry about the internal battery going dead after 12-15 hrs.  I will be there for 2 weeks so something that only gives me 12-15 hrs there is not even worth bringing there if I can’t charge it afterwords.

There are battery pack devices that take 4 AA batteries and charge usb devices from them. If you decide to get one, make sure it has a voltage regulator. I have the Tekkeon mp1550 ($20) which works well with nimh rechargeables. I think using alkalines in such a device though might not be that efficient, and perhaps a bit more than half the power will be wasted as heat. You could pre charge several sets of 2900 mah nimh batteries in a one hour charger, or buy some Sanyo Eneloop or Duracell precharged 2000-2100 mah low discharge rate nimh batteries. 

There are usb crank chargers, and usb solar chargers, however I have not tried those. Another option is to buy a large capacity lion battery pack.

Just stirring the pot . . .

http://www.anythingbutipod.com/archives/2010/01/mp3-player-battery-guide.php

@tapeworm wrote:

Just stirring the pot . . .

 

http://www.anythingbutipod.com/archives/2010/01/mp3-player-battery-guide.php

 Though the author is not for replaceable batteries, the majority of responders are.  

Oddly, though the web site is “anything but ipod,” the author of that article owns 2.

AFAIK Ipod was the first mp3 player with sealed batteries so lead the way for this type of design.

 

 

donp wrote:

AFAIK Ipod was the first mp3 player with sealed batteries so lead the way for this type of design.

True. I even remember the ‘outrage’ voiced by people over this. You could send the player in and Apple would replace the battery (or give you a complete re-furbed unit), but you couldn’t replace it yourself.

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.

Tapeworm 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 they wanted *something* that ipod  offered.  Size was more due to the 1.8 inch hard drive (Apple had exclusive access to this for a significant time) than sealed batteries.  I see that the Nexus phone is thinner than iphone even though it’s battery is swappable, so it CAN be done!

 Another big factor for Ipod was being the only player that worked with Itunes, and Itunes was the only (legal) source for downloadable mainstream music. 

 edit: The biggest common factor of people on both this forum and anythingbutipod is that most of us chose something else, so every decision made by apple is not right for everyone.

Message Edited by donp on 02-01-2010 10:13 AM

"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.