f13.net

Right now I have a 1GB USB mp3 player (this thing (http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-YP-U2JZW-Direct-Insert-Digital/dp/B000ET9ZGC)) that I have for the most part liked, except for the fact that it doesn't play songs in order of tracknumber, but rather alphabetically. It also doesn't read some id3 tags, which I suspect has to do with whether the tags are encoded in id3v1 or id3v2. What I'd like is for some suggestions for a replacement. The things I'm looking for are, in no particular order:

- plays music in order of track number. I like to listen to albums in order!
- under $100 if at all possible
- recognises id3 tags without trouble
- I don't need more than ~1GB of space
- plugs into USB without a cable. This is useful if i want to cart around documents on it. Not requisite but preferred.

I am considering the iPod Shuffle, just because I know it doesn't suck, but I don't really like iTunes much at all, and I like being able to open the thing as a removable disk and drag and drop stuff into it in explorer. Do any of you have an mp3 player to suggest? Any advice is very highly appreciated.

I can't speak for your other requirements but a decent amount of players have support for iPods.  So, if you're not a huge fan of iTunes, that doesn't need to get in your way.  (That said, iTunes 8 is :drill:.)

Creative Zen.
- Plays songs in order
- If you only want 1gb, there's probably a model for less than $100
- Mine came with a (very short) USB adapter; I must confess ignorance on how you can do usb without some kind of cable
- Mine looks like a hard drive to my PC. I can drag and drop my MP3s onto it.
- No iTunes or anything like it, as far as I know
- I couldn't say about the id3 tags

My 2gb Sansa Clip was $19.99 + $5 shipping from woot.com, and I love it.

It plays playlists in whatever order you set them in, It recognized id3 tags fine, if I'm thinking of the correct thing, but it does requires a cable (mini-usb, which is no problem because my phone use the same connecter).

People on the woot forums were saying their battery life lasted around 15 hours, and it seems about the same for me. The earbuds that came with it were pretty decent as well, but my damn cat chewed through them the day after I got it. :(

Thanks for the input, I'll take a look at the Zen and the Sansa the next time I'm around an electronics section.

Apple have been a pile of douches about the last two generations of ipods and have been encrypting the database to keep third-party music managers from working with them.  So unless there's a workaround that I'm ignorant of, itunes is mandatory for any ipod newer than September 07.

I just use a cheap Nokia 6120/6121 phone with a 2Gb microSD card ($10) and some better headphones than the stock ones. It's a 2Gb MP3 player and FM radio, which also happens to be a 3G phone, broadband modem, camera and Symbian OS platform. Just as good as listening to an iPod and saves carrying an extra device.

1gb Sansa Express up on Woot today. It's respiffied but it's only $20 with shipping.

I've gone through not a few MP3 players. The headphone jacks and buttons tend to wear out in less than a year. It's frustrating as hell.

Latest contender is a Coby that I picked up at Fred Meyer's. The headphone jack is rock-solid and mine has survived it's first year, and into year two now.

http://www.cobyusa.com/?p=pcat&pcat_id=1001

Cable-less MP3 players have a cap on one end that covers a USB plug. They plug directly to the USB port.

Thanks for the heads up, I'll see if this fits the bill. As ratman said, it has a cap on one end that covers a USB plug so you can plug it in like most flash drives.

For build quality, I've yet to see anything better than flash-based ipods or zunes.  Other players have an unfortunate tendency to be purely plastic, with all of the resilience that entails.  Microsoft and Apple have both made players that are cast-iron bitches.  If it weren't for lack of storage space that I wanted, I'd still be using my first-gen ipod nano today; I loved that thing and it was as sturdy as a brick.  Looked better than any ipod I've ever seen since, too.

I know that both ipods and zunes are out of the listed budget, except for the ipod shuffles, but ratman's report of dying buttons on MP3 players brought that to mind.

Yeah. I rarely have a big budget for music players. I like the keep them under 100 bucks. Usually under 50.