MP-3 player advice?

Need to buy one as a Christmas gift, know nothing about them. What is a good choice? thanks

1) How many songs will need to be put on it? (Storage capacity)
2) We're and when will it mostly be used? (car, gym, jogging, home stereo)
3) Budget?

# of songs...she is 11 so I think any reasonable number of songs will be cool with her. no need for cutting edge capacity, that is for sure.

will probably be used mostly on her way to school, way home, at home, and as she travels to any of her several athletic pursuits. probably pretty easy use compared to some.

cost? no budget really, just want to get something that is nice and easy to figure out and use. something "cool" gets bonus points, of course.

thanks

creative labs mufo fm 256.it dont even need a usb wire ya just plug it in and drag songs to unito it also can record voice
website

Try These links for new hiTech kewl gadget audio players. Engadget Dig deep thru here and you will definately find some kewl, tiny mp3 players.

If you can get over 500MB of flash memory then get that so she can have more songs. Look for decent battery life. mp3, WMA support and FM Radio tuner is nice too.


iRiver iRiver has some nice looking players too. easy pick.

It sounds like an expandable memory model would be handy, she might not have many songs, now, but as she get's older her collection will grow.

Many portable CD players now play mp3 files on CD-R and CD-RW discs now. This could be a real option for an 11 year old and has the dual-use angle. The drawback is higher battery demand and larger size, but you can fit 700MB of files on a single CD-R. These players are pretty reasonable in price right now.

Hard disk based players are very pricey, I would have misgivings about a youngster carrying around a $400 music player everywhere, and potentially getting lost. They do have the advantage of being able to hold an entire very large music collection.

Flash-memory based players range from $50 to $300 based on how much memory capacity is on board. I've seen some $50 players at the local Wal-Mart with 128MB of memory. That is around 2 hours of music capacity if the files are encoded at 160Kbps or less. They also have the least battery drain, and typically very small size. Better ones have a built-in FM radio tuner also.

My preference if for flash memory players. I just purchased a player (my xmas gift to myself this year) that has 512MB memory capacity, built in FM tuner, recording capabilities, and a built-in FM transmitter for playing music to a radio without using an adapter. It is a $200 unit I sniped on ebay for $170. Muro MR-100 mp3 player

Forgot this one. It's a watch with 256MB --- KEWL MP3 Watch

I see one gig flash cards advertised online for $60-70 bucks now so I would recommend a flash based player, particularly for a youngster as these players are the most durable. A gig card would typically hold at least a couple of hundred songs depending on size and compression of songs.

I'd also recommend a CDR/W based portable MP3 player, assuming you/she has access to a CD burner (and who doesn't anymore). On many of them battery life is as good as flash based players, and better than hard drive players, plus there is the advantage of playing regular CD's too. I have three CD-MP3 players, two flash based players, and two hard drive MP3 players.

I like the small form factor and longer battery life of the flash based players, and I think they would be great if some of the better manufacturers made them with removeable or upgradeable memory cards/sticks. Unfortunately all of the good ones I know of have captive memory and can't be upgraded or switched out for a higher capacity.

-Keith

CD/CDRW players are economical and great for listening at your desk or the like. For running around you want a flash based player. There are some tiny ones available. Sandisk makes a cute expandable one that's not the tiniest, but it's expandable with their Cruzer Micro flash drives (don't confuse Cruzer Micro with the slightly larger Cruzer Mini that won't fit in the player). I'd go for the 256 meg bundle to start with:

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=80413-384001