High capacity mp3 players?

[esotericjester]

I currently have an 80 GB ipod and I'm looking for something with more storage space. Obviously Apple makes a 160 GB ipod, so I know that is an option, but I would like to see if there are any other options. I see that Archos makes a pmp/tablet that goes up to 500 GB, but I've found mixed reviews. The Archos 5 with Android certainly looks cool, but I don't know if I would use enough of it's functionality to justify spending that much. Does anyone here have experience with this device that would be able to tell me how well it performs now with the most up to date firmware? I would be using it as an mp3 player the vast majority of the time along with playing videos and I would definitely use the wifi if I had it, but it isn't something I consider a "must have" feature.

 

[slackerinabox]

I had an Archos 405? 505? I forget the model number but it's about 2 generations old, and has 80gb on it (up to 200, I believe). I wanted to like it but, jeesh, the build quality is awful. The lcd is nice and bright but would fritz out (invert colors) at an annoying rate. The battery life sucked, or was inconsistent to be fair (sometime I'd get 4 hours of use, sometimes a fully charged battery would last an hour), and there were numerous software glitches, including certain bitrate MP3 files causing the player to crash. That was the worst part, since VBR MP3s are both common and old school technology, crashing on MP3 playback is pretty much a deal breaker for a media player.

I dropped the archos, to be fair onto a hard wood floor, and the player is completely dead now. Killing a PMP due to one drop seems a bit crazy to me. Maybe their solid state players are better, but they only go up to 32gb.

I would stick to either an 160gb iPod classic or a 120 gb ZUNE. In fact, I love my 30gb zune and am not a MS zealot at all - it's just a great media player with a great marketplace.

 

[shortylickens]

I cant imagine anyone listening to 160GB worth of music everyday, but if you have to I would recommend a player that takes SD cards. You can get them up to 32GB these days. Just keep one of each type of music on a seperate card, (rock, rap, classical, etc.) After doing that for a while I would get tired, but then again I only have 8gigs of music in my car system and its more than enough for a long ass road trip. 16 would be extreme and 32 would just be wasteful.

Also, exactly how much did all that music cost you?

 

[slackerinabox]

I cant imagine anyone listening to 160GB worth of music everyday, but if you have to I would recommend a player that takes SD cards. You can get them up to 32GB these days. Just keep one of each type of music on a seperate card, (rock, rap, classical, etc.) After doing that for a while I would get tired, but then again I only have 8gigs of music in my car system and its more than enough for a long ass road trip. 16 would be extreme and 32 would just be wasteful.

Also, exactly how much did all that music cost you?

I only have an 8 gigger myself now, but I really liked being able to use it as an external hard drive (my 80gb player). Also, videos take up a hell of a lot of space.

Also, about your implication of piracy - zune pass is absurdly awesome. My 30gb zune (now used by my wife) is absolutely full of legal music, and we routinely have to remove stuff to add new music.

 

[esotericjester]

Thanks for the responses.

I cant imagine anyone listening to 160GB worth of music everyday, but if you have to I would recommend a player that takes SD cards. You can get them up to 32GB these days. Just keep one of each type of music on a seperate card, (rock, rap, classical, etc.) After doing that for a while I would get tired, but then again I only have 8gigs of music in my car system and its more than enough for a long ass road trip. 16 would be extreme and 32 would just be wasteful.

Also, exactly how much did all that music cost you?

I don't know exactly how much. It's a combination of about 15 years worth of cd purchases (they were ripped into Apple lossless format, so I know that I can save some space by using a compressed format) along with a few albums downloaded from the itunes store and multiple tv series downloaded from the itunes store. None of it was pirated.

I realize that I don't need to have all of my music on the player at the same time, but I really don't want to go through loading different music and videos all the time if I can avoid it. I use it when I am at work for 8-10 hrs a day and on trips so I like to keep it all on the ipod so I don't have to try to predict what I will feel like listening to later in the day or weekend. I considered going with a smaller player that has the ability to expand with SD cards, but by the time the cost of the cards are factored in, the price gets close to the fancy Archos player that I mentioned. I still may do something like this since flash based players obviously have a lot of advantages over disk base players.

I had an Archos 405? 505? I forget the model number but it's about 2 generations old, and has 80gb on it (up to 200, I believe). I wanted to like it but, jeesh, the build quality is awful. The lcd is nice and bright but would fritz out (invert colors) at an annoying rate. The battery life sucked, or was inconsistent to be fair (sometime I'd get 4 hours of use, sometimes a fully charged battery would last an hour), and there were numerous software glitches, including certain bitrate MP3 files causing the player to crash. That was the worst part, since VBR MP3s are both common and old school technology, crashing on MP3 playback is pretty much a deal breaker for a media player.

I dropped the archos, to be fair onto a hard wood floor, and the player is completely dead now. Killing a PMP due to one drop seems a bit crazy to me. Maybe their solid state players are better, but they only go up to 32gb.

I would stick to either an 160gb iPod classic or a 120 gb ZUNE. In fact, I love my 30gb zune and am not a MS zealot at all - it's just a great media player with a great marketplace.

I only have an 8 gigger myself now, but I really liked being able to use it as an external hard drive (my 80gb player). Also, videos take up a hell of a lot of space.

Also, about your implication of piracy - zune pass is absurdly awesome. My 30gb zune (now used by my wife) is absolutely full of legal music, and we routinely have to remove stuff to add new music.

I may just go with the larger ipod as you recommend. I know that it will work for what I need, and while the Archos players have a really attractive feature list, I have now read/heard too many stories like the one you shared about the devices failing or having exceptionally poor battery life.

 

[frostedflakes]

Really I don't think you have many options these days, a lot of manufacturers have stopped offering large HDD-based players in favor of flash-based ones. I think iPod and Zune are the only ones that you can still get with large hard drives. There's the Archos 5 Internet Tablet as well, but it's intended to be much more than just a music player, so it might kind of be overkill for your needs.