Help! Zen Micro or iPod?

Nala

Hi everyone,
Well I'm trying to choose between an iPod Mini (6gb) and a Zen Micro. I need a durable player with long battery life. One of the things I'm concerned about is that the iTunes software isn't meant to be very good, also that the Zen Micro breaks/stops working easily. Can anyone tell me which is better?

muckwarrior

Well if battery life is important I'd go with the Zen. iPods in general have a very bad reputation regarding battery life.

Goldstein

If I may offer some advise, if you decide to go down the iPod road. Now is not a good time to buy an iPod mini. The normal iPods and iPod photos have now been merged into one product with all the features of the iPod photos. I think they'll be bringing the minis in line with the new iPod before long.

Or alternatively, the new 20Gig iPods are €317. Comparing it to the mini, for the extra €100 it has 5 times the storage, colour screen (larger aswell), includes the AC adapter and you can view your photos on it (JPG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, PNG).

They come with a warranty so I wouldn't let past battery stories worry you. The minis battery life is 18 hours, the iPods is 15. (Assuming 128kbps...yada yada). Real world usage at a decent bitrate will obviously be less.

On the iTunes matter:
I nearly didn't get mine because I'd heard people complaining about iTunes. Oddly enough, I'd now count it among the primary reasons for getting an iPod. The system is just so efficient - You connect your iPod, and it automatically syncs all your music, playlists, photos and podcasts to the iPod, click eject and that's it. No messing around in directories, copying, pasting or any of that lark. And as for iTunes itself, even if I didn't have an iPod I'd still be using iTunes as my music player, clean minimalistic design, very intuitive and easy to use, bigger overhead but that doesn't bother me. They've just realised version 4.9 which I haven't had a chance to use in depth yet, but they've added some nice features such as podcast listings.

rsynnott

muckwarrior wrote:

Well if battery life is important I'd go with the Zen. iPods in general have a very bad reputation regarding battery life.

This has actually changed, as of the iPod mini upgrade. It's battery life was allegedly doubled, and that actually seems quite accurate.

neither,
long battery life = iriver h10
sturdy build = iriver h10
easy to use = iriver h10
compatability with Computer = iriver h10

Nala

Deleted User wrote:

neither,
long battery life = iriver h10
sturdy build = iriver h10
easy to use = iriver h10
compatability with Computer = iriver h10

But iPod's and Zen Micro's are prettier!

*shallow girlieness aside*

One thing I'm worried about is memory. I have about 60 CD's worth of music I'd like to put on the MP3 player. Because I intend on having this MP3 player at least a few years, I'd like for it to be able to store about 120 CD's worth of MP3's at decent quality. At the moment, all I have is a 128mb flash player, and in order to fit a decent number of songs on it, all my music is 64kb WMA. Unfortunately, although WMA halves the space needed for a song, it uses up the battery about twice as fast. So I need a player that can store a load of MP3's comfortably.

I see the iRiver H30 is abailable as a 20gb in America now-I'm going over in a few weeks, if I was to buy one there would I be able to return it to iRiver if it broke? Obviously I couldnt bring it back to the shop.

if you buy it in America i would make sure to get an extended warrantee on it. ALL players are tempermental and don't usually recover from a drop when on. I suffered this myself, my first mp3 player was bought in America and 3 and a half months later it fell from a height of 3 feet when it was on and broke. I ended up having to pay 180 to get it fixed (still cheaper overall then it was here). If you don't get a warrantee then you're only covered for the first 3 months. And if they break you return them to the producer not the shop. The producer is in charge of warrantees.

Nala

I've dropped my flash player loads of times but flash players don't have moving internal parts so I guess there's less chance of things moving around when the player is dropped.

That's another thing, I know the iPod Mini is meant to be jog-proof but what about the Zen Micro and the iRiver (either the H10 5gb or the H340 20gb)- are they job-proof? Just I likes my treadmill!

masteroftherealm

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Ipod mini is Flash, so that's fine. Same can't be said of the Zen or Irivers. Just so long as you don't run like paula radcliff, and don't strap it to your head you should be fine. I use my (brick sized) Zen Xtra at the Gym and just clip it to the treadmill or bike.

Creamy Goodness

all hard drive players are not 100% jog proof. they may have some sort of gimick like sony's g shock or whatever.

i know the ipod has a flash memory inside onto which the hard drive puts the song on it and hence gives the impression of shock proof.

only flash players are 100% guaranteed shock proof

cormie

masterofthereal wrote:

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iRiver and Cowan iAudio are you best bets, I wouldn't bother with a mini, for an extra small % of the price you get about 500% or so more storage.

cormie

Deleted User wrote:

Ipod mini.

Are you not thinking of the iPod shuffle? Don't go for an ipod shuffle by the way, they don't even have a screen!!

wasn't reccommending any Ipods at all! Just saying that the mini is "jog proof".

Nala

No I wouldn't go near an iPod shuffle.

Shame there's no black-or-white way of knowing which MP3 player to get.
Decisions decisions!

The iPod Mini's flash memory is appealing to me because I'm forever dropping things. My phone is covered in scratches from me dropping it. Plus the iPod mini's covering is aluminium as opposed to the Zen Micro's plastic, isn't it? Which means it's more scratch-resistant I hope. (I don't like the look of those iSkin things).

Creamy Goodness

Deleted User wrote:

wasn't reccommending any Ipods at all! Just saying that the mini is "jog proof".

is it, doesn't it essentially have a hard drive in it though?

yep, it'll break if it's dropped, but t can take a bit of shaking.

NotMe

Deleted User wrote:

neither,
long battery life = iriver h10
sturdy build = iriver h10
easy to use = iriver h10
compatability with Computer = iriver h10

crap firmware = iRiver h10

rsynnott

Nala wrote:

No I wouldn't go near an iPod shuffle.

Shame there's no black-or-white way of knowing which MP3 player to get.
Decisions decisions!

The iPod Mini's flash memory is appealing to me because I'm forever dropping things.

That's nice, except it doesn't have flash memory, it has a small magnetic hard disk.

NotMe

NotMe wrote:

crap firmware = iRiver h10

does misticriver not have a good solution?

Nala

rsynnott wrote:

That's nice, except it doesn't have flash memory, it has a small magnetic hard disk.

Ok: The iPod mini is appealing to me because it is reputed to be jog-proof, which is good because I am forever dropping things!

jog-proof doesn't mean drop proof.

NotMe

does misticriver not have a good solution?

I have the latest firmware and it does have some problems. To be honest, it's not that bad but compared to Creatives firmware I find it annoying to use.

i don't see how it could be annoying, surely when you get used to it it seems easy.

NotMe

No it's not difficult to use, it's just so slow and unresponsive. When I press play on a song it takes 15-20 seconds to start playing. Then if I press forward it can take 0 - 20 seconds to skip to the next song and sometimes after skipping it becomes completely unresponsive so I press forward 5 times... nothing... then 20 seconds later it skips forward 5 songs. Oh yeah the same thing can happen between songs when playing normally, not just when you press forward.

The browser mode is useless. If you have a lot of songs on it you could make a cup of tea while waiting for the browser to open.

And then there's lack of on-the-fly playlists...

hmm, are you sure it's not just yours? My mate's seemed pretty quick alright.

NotMe

It seems to be a pretty common complaint on mystic river. Although they mainly talk about a long gap between tracks on DRM content and I don't have any DRM music.

if i was you i'd get it checked out, surely you cant have had it for a year. Put all your music back on your pc, give the mp3 player a couple of kicks and send it back for a replacement.

NotMe

I might just do that.

cormie

the iPod mini is surely only as jog proof as the rest of the Hard Drive based players out there? And yes, jog proof has nothing to do with durability. Jog proof is simply the buffer on the device to deal with shakes, not falls or knocks.

Tell us more.

What do you want an mp3 player for? Be as detailed as possible, your music collection size, hours spent listening per day, situations where you will be listening to it with, are you computer literate, are you prepared to spend time to get your collection the way you want it. Give as much info as possible and you'll get a better response.

rsynnott

cormie wrote:

the iPod mini is surely only as jog proof as the rest of the Hard Drive based players out there? And yes, jog proof has nothing to do with durability. Jog proof is simply the buffer on the device to deal with shakes, not falls or knocks.

The smaller disks are a little less prone to vibration problems, and ipods in generaly have a larger memory cache than most of the competition. However, the iPod mini is certainly not drop proof. The ipod shuffle is, to a large extent.