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General discussion

The most duriable mp3 player

by thehting89 Feb 7, 2005 8:55AM PST

im gonna get a mp3 player soon and i want one that is VERY duriable. i mean it wont break no matter what happens to it. and when i mean duriable i mean it will actually last me more than two weeks before it screws up.

im considering the apple ipod or the creative zen touch(20gb).

Discussion is locked

3 Posts
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Neither
by squeaky Feb 9, 2005 6:42AM PST

Neither of those will take much abuse.
I know people who knocked their iPods off a 3 foot table and broke the hard drive, though iPod claims to have a fall-proof (turns off HD when it sense falling) iPod in the making. the Zen touch will have the same problem.
Pretty much the most durable MP3 players are Flash based ones, since none that I have seen have broken, even after my friend dropped it from 5 feet up and I've knocked it against things countless times.

My Dell DJ has brocken when I dropped it on the carped from my bed, which was about 3-4 feet up, but my Creative Muvo N200 has never had a problem

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Flash be the best choce, but if considering HDD device,,,
by LifezFun Feb 9, 2005 9:09AM PST

As "Squeeky" mentioned, Flash device would be the best choice, and there's a whole lot a choices out there.

But if you are looking for a HDD device, I wouldn't go for an iPod. It breaks down pretty easily.
A lot of HDD players have some protection in it, from just cushion around HDD unit to sensor enabled protection.

If you'd asked me, I would go for the new Sony's HDD device, NW-HD3. I have one myself, and it's pretty sturdy. It seems that the previous model, HD1 is better in terms of durability because the casing is magnesium alloy, and it feels very nice. The downside is that HD1 does not support MP3 natively.

The thing about Sony is that they have what they call the "G-Sensor", which detects the fall and retracts the HDD head to the landing zone.
Sony made a strategy shift recently, and NW-HD3 supports native MP3. Also, if you buy it now, it comes with 50 credits ($50 worth) to buy songs from Connect store, which makes the price of this device comparable to iPod.

Sound like I'm a sales person from Sony, but the thing is, I love my Sony device. Can't help it.
AND the battery on this lasts forever!!! 30 hours. Can you believe that?!

Cheers,

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HD, yup
by squeaky Feb 9, 2005 9:43AM PST

As far as HD players are concerned, I looked into that one and it looks pretty good too.
The only thing is that HD players by nature have moving parts, and flash ones don't have any on the storage part, so they're going to eventually break from too much movement. So the sony will last very very well, but if you are going to be putting it through a ton of abuse, as your post kinda implies, flash would be ultimately better.

But don't let me scare you away from HD players, they can take abuse, just they really aren't designed for above-average amounts of it.

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