# Mobile MP3/MP4 player recommendations?



## Brian G Turner (Jan 21, 2019)

I'm looking for a decent mobile MP3/MP4 player I can upload my iTunes library to, preferably with minimum storage capacity of 128GB (it's fine if through a SD card).

My iPhone 5 is slowly dying, and it never had enough memory to store all my music on. I used to have iTunes Match but I decided against spending the £20/year for it.

It would be nice to get an iPod with 128GB of memory, but I'm not keen on spending upwards of £300 on a device that I will honestly use as little more than a music player.

However, I'm struggling to find anything I can really trust. I like good sound quality, and I'm not interested in spending peanuts on a device that will provide low quality performance.

Any recommendations?

EDIT: The Sony Walkman MP3 player looks decent, though a little more pricey than I was expecting to pay: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0798LBBJW/?tag=brite-21


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## Danny McG (Jan 23, 2019)

128Gb?
Wow! That's gotta be like a solid month of non-stop listening.
Mine's got 16Gb and all my actual music uses just over 12Gb 
(Lots of ruthless trimming over the years, why have a full album if I only ever listen to 2 tracks on it and skip the others? Etc)


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## HareBrain (Jan 23, 2019)

I was under the impression they'd stopped making dedicated MP3 players, as so many people have smartphones. I'll be interested to see what recommendations you get, as I'll soon need to replace my ancient Creative Zen player, whose screen has now faded too much to read except in darkness. (But if you can still get them, I'd recommend that for the sound quality.)


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## Brian G Turner (Jan 23, 2019)

The Sony A45 looks like the most recent version. However, for £150, + £25+ for a 128GB SD Card, it means another £100 gets me an iPod with all the extra functionality of web browsing and apps. I'm not sure that seems very competitive.

Maybe I should just suck it up and use iTunes Match again for a couple of years, and see what happens in the meantime...


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## AlexH (Jan 23, 2019)

My favourite MP3 player ever is the Sandisk Sansa Fuze, but I think the maximum capacity is 8GB plus a 32GB micro SD card, and it's not at the expensive side of the spectrum you're looking at. I tried others when my original Sansa Fuze broke (my fault and it still sort of works), but other MP3 players I tried had terrible usability (even after a couple of weeks use, so new device adoption wasn't an issue). I bought another couple of Sansa Fuzes so I have backup.

DO NOT, whatever anyone does, buy a Sandisk Sansa Fuze+. This is the version I'm referring to I like, with the scroll wheel: Sansa Fuze - Wikipedia - unfortunately I don't believe Sansa manufacture it any more, but it is available in some places.


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## Brian G Turner (Jan 23, 2019)

I was going to add, at £150, I could buy a decent old mid-range phone rather than a Sony MP3 player!


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## AlexH (Jan 23, 2019)

The problem I have with phones as an MP3 player is the batteries don't last very long.


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## Brian G Turner (Jan 24, 2019)

Another thought, to up my capacity on my iPhone, would be to simply buy an attachable harddrive - certainly as a short-term solution.


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## AlexH (Jan 24, 2019)

AlexH said:


> The problem I have with phones as an MP3 player is the batteries don't last very long.


Though maybe not if everything not needed is disabled by using airplane mode etc.


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## Happy Joe (Jan 25, 2019)

... Not sure about your listening environment, but I went through this (which mp3 player?) decision several years ago and just went to a smart phone with a decent sized memory chip/card (and multiple chips if one chip, eventually, becomes too small).  The music files are backed up on both the main computer and entertainment computer hard drives.
My Mp3 listening is pretty much limited to in vehicle (Bluetooth linked to the in dash stereo) and camping (no cell or wi-fi coverage); often with an auxiliary 12 volt Bluetooth amp and speakers (or flip-4; sonically mediocre/inferior, but more portable) for reproduction.
When the phone or flip 4 power runs low I plug it/them into a USB power bank (roughly twice as thick as the phone)... the power bank and/or devices like the blue-tooth amp can be powered/recharged from the (also rechargeable; solar or from the vehicle) 35 amp hour 12 volt tent battery and inverter (which runs the in tent lighting).

Enjoy!


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## Brian G Turner (Mar 22, 2019)

In the end I decided to just subscribe to iTunes Match, as it's the cheaper option in the short-term. 

It was a massive hassle doing so, though - at first iTunes wouldn't let me pay and I had to find a workaround that involved deleted a temporary folder before I could eventually subscribe. Then the iTunes Store wouldn't recognise my iTunes library to replace the tracks, resulting in an hour of trying to solve it myself, and hour on the phone with Apple Support, then another hour finally figuring out what to do - then leaving it overnight to update.

But, at least I have my music all together on my old iPhone now, and it's sounds clear and clean with my headphones. It'll do for the time being. 

In the future I may just treat myself to a good Android phone - I've always been impressed by the Xperia models. However, as I barely ever use my phone as a phone, I might just get a new Kindle Fire tablet so I can put all my music on an SD card, which would be a lot cheaper. I won't do that yet, though, as I have the older HDX 8 model which has better specs than the current Fire tablets, just no SD card slot.


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## Overread (Mar 22, 2019)

"massive headache" a reason I avoid i-tech  I find that their systems work great if you want to do what they want you to do; but as soon as you want to do anything non-defined by them its a nightmare to try and get it to work how you want it. I recall spending a good half hour trying to copy a few music files off a disk onto a computer and putting them in a folder. 5 seconds normally, but itunes of the day kept moving them somewhere else and putting them into auto generated "wrong" listings in the player. 

And yeah the MP3 market is basically dead. iPods killed off mostof the competition and mobile phones have done for the rest. It's a huge shame as I rather like single purpose hardware at times; often it does better than all-in-one and it also means that you don't get distracted by other things. It also means you can run it till the battery dies and you don't have to worry that you've just lost email, phone, navigation, whatever else.


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## AlexH (Mar 22, 2019)

I don't know why companies like Apple make things so difficult - they think they can rely on their name. I tried to buy an album last week (that wasn't on Bandcamp or sites I usually use) and it was a pain. After paying and downloading, I also realised it was in .m4a so had to convert it to MP3. Spotify are far worse - they're trying to force everyone into streaming, completely removing music ownership as a concept in the process.

Some of the circa £100-£150 Android phones (from Moto, Honor and Huawei) are excellent. People are surprised my £80 4 year+ old Moto is still going strong, though my Yahoo Mail app has started to slow, and my internal drive is showing as full when it isn't.


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