Portable Digital Player alternatives

[Sherwood]

Hi Geoff, just want to use with MP3s so I can have access to a full copy of my library to listen to in the car. Either use to replicate iTunes or happy to look at another system as all my digital files are on a NAS drive - but I want to fit at least 500gb on the player.
Budget up to £500.
Cheers John

To be honest, I would not look to be spending £500 if you are only going to be playing mp3 files in the car. You simply won't hear the benefits of an expensive player capable of playing HD music. Also, I guess portability is not a crucial requirement either. At the budget end you might want to consider an android tablet. These typically have good sized batteries and if the wifi is switched off, can run several days on a single charge. I have an Amazon Fire HD8 tablet and the battery on this lasts for ages. If you want to use HD files over wifi it can deal with those too. Same with Tidal. You can actually download Tidal HD files to the device at home and play them back in the car over BT. Another option is something like the Moto G7 Power phone. I recently acquired one of these because I was fed up with my phone "dying" at the end of each day. The Moto G7 Power will literally run for days providing you are not playing videos over wifi all the time.

Coming to specialist mp3 players, I can recommend the Sony range. I have an earlier model but this model due to be launched soon looks as if it will meet your requirements (long battery life and good quality bluetooth). It will also perform well with good headphones on HD music files. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sony-NW-A55...qid=1572440056

[Sherwood]

When I go on a long car trip I typically just throw a bunch of albums on a CD in MP3 format which the CDP in the car can read (with metadata displayed on the head unit). Can get about 10 albums on a CD at the highest MP3 res of 320k. Yes yes, lossless may well be better but what with car noise etc MP3 320k is just fine. Blank CDs are about 20p each.

Occasionally I will stream Tidal from my phone to the head unit via an aux cable. I think there is a USB slot on the head unit as well but not bothered so far.

I used to do the same: back in the last millenium. I was an early adopter and bought a Shuttle External CD burner in 1997. It was SCSI based and I had to buy a SCSI pcmia card adaptor (I still have it somewhere) to run it off my laptop. Burn failures where the norm (at least one in three failed) and the discs deteriorated after a while. I first used the discs with a Sony CD Walkman but then got a car cd player and I thought it was great. Seems prehistoric today!

[Edward]

I used to do the same: back in the last millenium. I was an early adopter and bought a Shuttle External CD burner in 1997. It was SCSI based and I had to buy a SCSI pcmia card adaptor (I still have it somewhere) to run it off my laptop. Burn failures where the norm (at least one in three failed) and the discs deteriorated after a while. I first used the discs with a Sony CD Walkman but then got a car cd player and I thought it was great. Seems prehistoric today!

Ah well Geoff, I'm so old school.

[struth]

To be honest, I would not look to be spending £500 if you are only going to be playing mp3 files in the car. You simply won't hear the benefits of an expensive player capable of playing HD music. Also, I guess portability is not a crucial requirement either. At the budget end you might want to consider an android tablet. These typically have good sized batteries and if the wifi is switched off, can run several days on a single charge. I have an Amazon Fire HD8 tablet and the battery on this lasts for ages. If you want to use HD files over wifi it can deal with those too. Same with Tidal. You can actually download Tidal HD files to the device at home and play them back in the car over BT. Another option is something like the Moto G7 Power phone. I recently acquired one of these because I was fed up with my phone "dying" at the end of each day. The Moto G7 Power will literally run for days providing you are not playing videos over wifi all the time.

Coming to specialist mp3 players, I can recommend the Sony range. I have an earlier model but this model due to be launched soon looks as if it will meet your requirements (long battery life and good quality bluetooth). It will also perform well with good headphones on HD music files. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sony-NW-A55...qid=1572440056

was looking at that one myself actually. Looks to be all you need

[johnB]

Thanks Geoff - looks like a Walkman with a large capacity SD card is the way to go. Cheers John

[dave2010]

Over the last year I've had a bunch of hire cars. I noticed that many have a USB port, so I filled up a cheap memory stick with some mp3s, and tried that. In most new cars that works, though the interface is usually pretty crude - depends on the car. Not ideal, but it means I can move it between cars. The only slight snag is remembering to take it out of any hire car when the car is returned. So far I've managed.

Other people use their phones plus Bluetooth - which I don't think works on some older cars - even ones with Bluetooth (if the version of Bluetooth doesn't support audio from external devices).

Like a couple of others here, I have in the past burnt mp3s to disc, and kept those in our cars. As mentioned this allows the equivalent of several CDs to be stored on one disc. I think I usually managed to get about 5 CDs on one blank disc.
Mostly in the last few years I have bought CDs from charity shops, and been happy to use those in our cars - though obviously bulkier than having everything on a single device or disc. It's not such a good approach for hire cars.

I do have a Classic iPod, which hardly ever gets used. Partly the reason for that is that when I got it I foolishly connected it to a Windows PC, so it was formatted for Windows - and in the early days of iPods that restricted what it could be connected to. However, it has been used on some holidays in the last few years, as one of the people we go with has a portable system which can work with these devices if we load it up with music we want beforehand. I think most people who aren't antediluvian like me just use their smartphones these days.

We had a few older iPods, some of which didn't work too well. Ms D wanted one for her car, so we gave those to her. However the devices continued to be problematic so she eventually bought an iPod Touch specifically for use in her car about a year ago, and seems happy with that. She does a lot of travelling. I'm not sure if her recently purchased smartphone has now replaced the Touch. Perhaps not, as the car is old enough that I think it needs a wired connection to the audio system.

[mikeyb]

I use an old Motorola Moto X Play ( built for music and games, hence the 'Play') smartphone with 128gb mSD card in it. It's all you need. Not tried it with a larger mSD card but might work fine.

Excellent audio quality, better than my iPad, my Fiio DAP and iPod that I've used.

Great battery life too. Pick one up for peanuts

Motorola Moto X Play https://g.co/kgs/WwRsS8

[dave2010]

Great battery life too. Pick one up for peanuts

Motorola Moto X Play https://g.co/kgs/WwRsS8

Your peanuts are expensive!

[mikeyb]

Your peanuts are expensive!

£40-50 second hand for a Smartphone, compared to some of the latest smartphones at £700-800 I don't it's too bad.

And way way under the OPs budget of £500

The link was just to show the phone

[dave2010]

£40-50 second hand for a Smartphone, compared to some of the latest smartphones at £700-800 I don't it's too bad.

And way way under the OPs budget of £500

The link was just to show the phone

OK - though does one really get the benefit of the quality you mention in a car environment? I suppose it doesn't have to be only used in a car. Perhaps many of us just use gadgets we've already bought and maybe put in drawers to gather dust, as technology moves on.

One snag with smartphones is the need to keep charging them. Some last a while now, but my Sony (which I hardly use) runs down in a day usually. I have thought about buying a second hand iPhone just for use as a camera. There are some quite decent smartphones for around £300 - and indeed the Moto phones which you linked to are relatively cheap even new - if you happen to want one.