Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

Higher capacity AAA or AA players?

Jul 16, 2005 4:36AM PDT

Does anyone know of a larger capacity MP3 player that uses either AA or AAA batteries?

Specifically, I'm looking for either a 1 gig flash drive with an SD card slot (I've already looked at the Sandisk Sansa e100; doesn't seem to be a good fit for me), or a 4+ gig micro or hard drive player. The only hard-drive based players I've seen use built-in batteries, which don't do a lot of good when you're backpacking (I've also seen the Creative series with a user-replacable battery, but plunking down $30 for an additional 12 hours isn't an option either when you're talking about 1-2 week trips).

I'm not overly concerned with any other features, but ideally I'd like drag-and-drop transfer support, native playlist support, FM radio, line-in recording, etc, pretty much in that order of importance.

Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Frontier Labs NEX Player
Jul 16, 2005 9:21AM PDT

The Frontier Labs NEX II or NEX Ia might be what you are looking for. I use the NEX II with lots of success. It's tough, well built, takes AA Batteries and read CF Cards or Microdrives. And the sound is excellent too.
They can be had anywhere from 40 Dollars up on Ebay.

- Collapse -
Thanks for the lead; doing some more research now
Jul 16, 2005 12:08PM PDT

Thanks for the lead EaglePatrol. Researching the Nex line, I started looking at the Nex 3, then stumbled onto Lexar's LDP-200. Both seem to be getting pretty solid reviews (unless anyone might know more to sway me one way or the other?), although the Nex series looks to be getting higher marks for durability, while Lexar seems to have the product support you'd expect from a larger brand. Now I'm just trying to find a retailer where I can get one of these 2 at a decent price, as well as some cheap media so I can skip a bit of the shipping costs. At $40 for either base player, I'll probably commit in the next day or two (if I don't find anything cheaper than NewEgg's Ritek media, it looks to be around $250 all told for a 4 gig setup; if only my camera used SD...), & will follow up with a review after a while.

Anyone have any more thoughts before I dole out some semi-hard-earned cash?

- Collapse -
I was considering the Nex players
Jul 17, 2005 5:12AM PDT

around thanksgiving period, last year. the reason i gave up on it was because there were almost no reviews on the product anywhere. and the sites that sold the product offered poor quality images of the product, or none at all. I still don't know if the players come with a screen or not. I'm guessing they don't. If someone can point me to a useful site with more information about the player, I'd appreciate it.