holiday season coming up and wife wants an mp3 player for poolside duties.

mines an old sansa zip that was recommended on here at the time, but i just wondered if thats still the go-to player.

to confuse things a little, shes wanting one that doesnt need a pc to load music. this is probably cos we have chromebooks these days, but id have thought if theres 2 USB slots on the chromebook, can you not connect the player plus the portable drive containing our music, and drag and drop still? if so then it doesnt matter.

thoughts please? (oh, and we dont do apple)

thanks

I’ve got one of these Sansa Clip+ numbers and I’m very happy with it (although MrsSalmon has broken a few). Can’t comment on the Chromebook stuff but your assumptions sound reasonable!

Got a smart(ish)phone? Just use that – get a little USB OTG flash drive and copy your music on to that, off you go

Got a smart(ish)phone? Just use that – get a little USB OTG flash drive and copy your music on to that, off you go

I like to have a small separate one for trips where my phone will be spending most of its time turned off at the bottom of my pack. For the train to work or whatever though, then phone.

Got a smart(ish)phone?

she has, but as mrsalmon points out, she wants a separate unit when the phones left switched off in hotel and doesnt want it covered in sand accidentally.

that little flash drive looks handy, but dont think we need one specifically.

as for the sansa, ill have a play with mine with the chromebook, see if itll copy and paste.

thanks so far, keep em coming 🙂

I recently bought a Sony Walkman, think mine is the NWZ-A15, or something catchy like that.

It takes an SD card so you could plug that into a phone/tablet via USB OTG and fill the SD card with music, then put the card in the player. I do the same but load the SD card from my computer rather than a phone/tablet.

to confuse things a little, shes wanting one that doesnt need a pc to load music. this is probably cos we have chromebooks these days, but id have thought if theres 2 USB slots on the chromebook, can you not connect the player plus the portable drive containing our music, and drag and drop still? if so then it doesnt matter.

A stand-alone music player is going to need a computer of some sort to get music onto it, because it won’t have its own access to online music sources. In order to drag’n’drop you obviously have to have the music stored somewhere to drag it from.
As far as devices goes, the Fiio players look good, the higher end ones have two card slots, and get firmware updates to allow bigger cards to be used. The Fiio X5, IIRC, can currently take a pair of 128Gb cards, with a pair of 500Gb cards a distant possibility.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/FiiO-X1-Hi-Res-MP3-Player-Silver/dp/B00MWWE6WW
http://www.amazon.co.uk/FiiO-X3-Portable-MP3-Player-Black/dp/B00DQBWY04
http://www.amazon.co.uk/FiiO-X5-MP3-Player-DAC-Black/dp/B00I4Q9S32

I had the sansa clip, but it became useless after 3 months then tried rockbox till it died after 6 month. I sometimes use a cheap mobile (nokia 105) which can take a 32gb sd card and got 3.5mm headphone. I dont use a sim card in it and battery lasts 3-4 days, just as a mp3 player and drag n drop through windows

Sorry to go OT but is that FiiO the new iRiver equivalent?

+1 Sansa Clip for budget

+1 FiiO for decent. Plays uncompressed FLAC files too, which is why I use it.

(I have both)

nearly £300 for an mp3 player?? 😯 dont think itll be that one she buys 🙂

looks like the sansa’s still the go-to choice for budget beach use then.

thanks a lot

I have a sansa clip zip, and it works fine.

I’ve not managed to upload songs from a chromebook, but you may be able to pull it off using an SD card reader.

Also anyone know any good waterproof cases for Sansa players?

nearly £300 for an mp3 player??

Why not? A 13 year old 20Gb iRiver hard disk based player will still set you back about £100, mine literally hasn’t depreciated since I bought it second hand about 9 years ago. And it doesn’t have a DAC…

Do you have a kindle or similar? Check that first- they sometimes play mp3s as well and it’ll save you taking two devices to the beach

sadexpunk – Member
nearly £300 for an mp3 player?? dont think itll be that one she buys

looks like the sansa’s still the go-to choice for budget beach use then.

thanks a lot

That was the most expensive of the three I suggested! And yes, for its performance and upgradability, it’s certainly worth it.
If you think £300 for a player that can carry 256Gb of music, upgradable ultimately to just over 1Tb, then how about the Sony that only has 128Gb of storage and costs £600?
http://www.johnlewis.com/sony-nwz-zx1-walkman-128gb-bluetooth-nfc-high-resolution-audio-player/p1533127?sku=233694305&kpid=233694305&s_kenid=3fb09a35-1b90-12e9-5383-00003947f374&s_kwcid=402×175243&tmad=c&tmcampid=73&kpid=233694305