Portable Digital Audio Player

[sechs]

I'm looking to buy a new portable digital audio player for a friend of mine.

She currently uses a fairly ancient Rio with 16 or 32MB of flash, which is starting to get a bit wonky. She mostly needs it for working out, so flash is probably the better choice. As I've convinced her that it's a better choice than MP3, it also needs to support vorbis.

I don't own one of these devices, so, I'm not sure if there any additional considerations I should make. Right now, I'm considering models from iRiver and iAudio; mostly the IFP-895T and iAudio I5-1024BL.

What do folks here say?

 

[LunarMist]

I have been using this little one for about a year. I comes with a clip and armband.

 

[The JoJo]

I've been using a Twinmos 512MB player for workout. It was very cheap for having that much memory. Recommended.

 

[Mercutio]

For $200, a Creative Zen looks like a pretty good deal. I'd rather have 30GB than 1GB.

 

[CityK]

I had an iriver unit for a short period and liked it....Andy also apparently like(s/d) his. But you might also want to see the views of a wider audience....I could see the control knob becoming disfunctional, as some reported.....I think they have new designs out now, so don't know if they are using the same "knob"

 

[i]

At my old job I used to have to deal with a dysfunctional knob all the time.

Turns out he was fired this past summer. Yay!

 

[ddrueding]

Audio quality from a portale player for use during workouts? I'd think MP3 would be fine for that...

I got an iPod Nano before going to China, and have been really happy with it.

 

[CityK]

Audio quality from a portale player for use during workouts?

I read the post as mostly, but not exclusively ... in otherwords there may be time when one appreciates a finer fidelity than that outputted by many of the crappy players out there.

I got an iPod Nano before going to China, and have been really happy with it.

The Nano is interesting. I wonder how long it will be untill there are knock offs

 

[sechs]

But you might also want to see the views of a wider audience....I could see the control knob becoming disfunctional, as some reported.....I think they have new designs out now, so don't know if they are using the same "knob"

The 89x models are "improved" versions of the 79x. I haven't heard any problems concerning construction on the newer models.

 

[sechs]

Just an FYI... the proposed recipient of this device purchased a home exercise bike during the black Friday sales so that she could watch TV while exercising... and so won't have much use for such a gift.

Maybe I'll just get her a USB flash drive....

 

[Mercutio]

I got to play with a video ipod today.
The main thing that doing so did, was show me the weaknesses inherent in iTunes. iTunes is god-awful. You can't just copy files to an ipod through a file manager. Nope. God forbid you plug one in to a computer with a different library.

 

[ddrueding]

I got to play with a video ipod today.
The main thing that doing so did, was show me the weaknesses inherent in iTunes. iTunes is god-awful. You can't just copy files to an ipod through a file manager. Nope. God forbid you plug one in to a computer with a different library.

You can. You just need to buy a different software package from a 3rd party. When I reccomend an iPod, I include this into the price ($30) and explain why. The physical player is far superior to any of the competition. I'm interested in some of the linux-mods for expanded functionality.