Looking for Bluetooth capable music player for less than $150, what are my options?

[natto fire]

I know the best solution is to just get a smart phone and call it day, but I have no plans of getting a data plan on my cell in the near future. I will mainly be using this with a job site radio so durability and long battery life are my biggest concerns. The main reason I want Bluetooth is because I will also use the player with my wireless headphones on vacation.

It looks like none of Sandisk's offerings have it, which is a shame because I really liked my Sansa m240, and would definitely give another Sandisk unit a try.

Thanks in advance, as I have been out of the loop on this stuff for a long time, and the more I search the more it seems like I am going to find a device that fits my criteria of <$150 and bluetooth built in.

 

[ControlD]

Your best bet would be to buy an old Android phone and simply use it as a media player. You don't need to have the cell service enabled at all and thus no data plan. I have looked for Bluetooth mp3 players as well and outside of the iPod Touch and a few Android devices they just really don't exist. I now use an old Samsung Fascinate as a media player and it does OK but the battery sucks.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Moto G

 

[Commodus]

iPod nano ($149, has Bluetooth built-in) or a Moto G bought straight from Motorola or Amazon, I'd say.

 

[crashtestdummy]

Look at the Lumia 520/521 for $60. You don't have to have a SIM card for it. It also has the benefit of coming with offline GPS maps (though you will need to insert a SIM card for a couple minutes to make the maps work).

The Verizon prepaid Moto G can be had for about $100, and will also work great.

 

[vshah]

verizon prepaid moto g, no question. unless you need a lot more local storage.

 

[notposting]

The Lumia 520/521 accepts memory cards and has a user replaceable battery.
However, they still have not freaking fixed WP8 to enable gapless playback yet.

 

[l33tFuzzyLogic]

Honestly, I'd search eBay for a used one. Some who's upgraded to the latest-and-greatest will be willing to part with the old for peanuts. That would be my suggestion.

It's pretty easy to search: Link

 

[WelshBloke]

Moto G

It's a bit limited on storage for a pure music player with no streaming option.

I'd go for an older phone with an SDcard slot and the option to add an extended aftermarket battery.

 

[gmaster456]

Lumia 520 with an SD card. You'll get up to 72gb of storage

 

[natto fire]

Thanks everyone for the suggestions, I guess I din't think of just using a phone with no service, also assumed they were a lot more without a contract.

I am definitely leaning towards the Lumia, as the idea of removable batteries and memory cards is a big plus, but I am curious how bad the playback gap is on WP. I did bit of research and saw from .3 seconds to a couple seconds. I could handle the former as I don't really listen to entire albums and the gap would barely be noticeable.

I'm assuming the iPod Nano would chew through it's tiny battery pretty quick with bluetooth enabled.

The Moto G is a slick device, and if I was using as a phone/music player would give that consideration because of the Android OS, but I have zero plans of getting service for a while.

edit: So I'm assuming I want an unlocked device, or is it ok to just buy this phone and take the SIM card out and use it, or do you need an unlocked version to use the phone without cell service? I'm assuming the phone won't function without a SIM card?

 

[crashtestdummy]

The gap isn't really noticeable, except when one track is supposed to bleed into another.

You don't need to get the unlocked version unless you plan on using it on a non-AT&T service. You also don't need to use a SIM card, except for the one caveat I mentioned with the GPS software.

 

[podspi]

Won't GPS also work over Wifi (for the offline setup)? I could have sworn I did this on my 520...

 

[AstroManLuca]

Thanks everyone for the suggestions, I guess I din't think of just using a phone with no service, also assumed they were a lot more without a contract.

I am definitely leaning towards the Lumia, as the idea of removable batteries and memory cards is a big plus, but I am curious how bad the playback gap is on WP. I did bit of research and saw from .3 seconds to a couple seconds. I could handle the former as I don't really listen to entire albums and the gap would barely be noticeable.

I'm assuming the iPod Nano would chew through it's tiny battery pretty quick with bluetooth enabled.

The Moto G is a slick device, and if I was using as a phone/music player would give that consideration because of the Android OS, but I have zero plans of getting service for a while.

edit: So I'm assuming I want an unlocked device, or is it ok to just buy this phone and take the SIM card out and use it, or do you need an unlocked version to use the phone without cell service? I'm assuming the phone won't function without a SIM card?

There's no need to buy the unlocked version unless you intend to use it on a different carrier than AT&T. If you don't put in the SIM card it just won't connect with cell towers (except if you make an emergency call, maybe). You can still use the phone on wifi. You might have trouble getting apps, though. I'm not sure if it'll let you sign in to an MS account without a sim card, which in turn would prevent you from accessing the store. So maybe you just put the sim card in at first, but don't use it, and make sure to turn off mobile data.

The Lumia 520 and 521 are identical except for the carrier (520 = AT&T, 521 = T-Mobile) and also the 521 is slightly taller so they could put the T-Mobile logo below the face buttons.

The other thing about the 520/521: I would recommend using bluetooth as much as possible and using the headphone jack as little as possible. I've seen multiple people with loose headphone jacks after a little while, myself included. Now I just use a bluetooth headset and it works fine.

 

[Yuriman]

I have two Galaxy S2's I'm trying to unload right now actually. They're still pretty quick phones and should be durable enough with a case, and because they have a uSD slot you can have up to 80GB of storage. Battery life is about 30 days of idle time in airplane mode and 4-5 hours of screen-on time per charge. That'd be my choice, and is actually what I did a few years ago.

 

[crashtestdummy]

Won't GPS also work over Wifi (for the offline setup)? I could have sworn I did this on my 520...

It is, but because the license is regional (it's an extra $20 for the world-wide version), you have to pop in a SIM the first time you use it for activation. After that, you don't need a SIM card to use the GPS.

 

[DefDC]

I gave my 6 year old daughter a Kyocera Hydro when they went on sale a few weeks ago. (No service, just wifi) Cheap removable batteries and an SD slot. At least twice now, they've been available for as low as $10 brand new. I'm sure the resellers still have many available on Ebay and the like. (I'm at work and can't check to see how much they are going for now...)

The nice thing about this phone is it's waterproof! I ended up buying a few and made one a live webcam with free software. It'll also be my goto lawn mowing mp3 player. I will keep my Note 3 stay safe and sound!

 

[Kaido]

I know the best solution is to just get a smart phone and call it day, but I have no plans of getting a data plan on my cell in the near future. I will mainly be using this with a job site radio so durability and long battery life are my biggest concerns. The main reason I want Bluetooth is because I will also use the player with my wireless headphones on vacation.

It looks like none of Sandisk's offerings have it, which is a shame because I really liked my Sansa m240, and would definitely give another Sandisk unit a try.

Thanks in advance, as I have been out of the loop on this stuff for a long time, and the more I search the more it seems like I am going to find a device that fits my criteria of <$150 and bluetooth built in.

Long story short: buy a pre-paid Moto G from Verizon or Boost Mobile (both available on Amazon for $99, no contract, nothing else required to pay for after the initial purchase). There's a thread in Hot Deals here:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2363225

$99 for the 8GB Verizon model, nothing additional to purchase:

http://www.amazon.com/Moto-Verizon-P...dp/B00HPP3QD6/

Only downside is that you're limited to 8GB (no expandable storage), but that's a pretty decent 1500+ songs (@ ~5 MB per MP3). Plus if you have Wifi in the area, you can use Pandora & other streaming radio apps. Check the Hot Deals thread for music player app recommendations.

 

[natto fire]

Thanks everyone for the replies, I ended up ordering a Lumia 520 and 32GB mSD card. It was definitely way under budget, which I am happy about. I'll see how I like the WP interface and battery life, but it will have to suck pretty bad to mar the $67 price. If it works out well enough I might invest in a battery or two as well.

 

[gmaster456]

The Stock OEM batteries are something like $5-7

 

[natto fire]

Thanks everyone for the replies, I ended up ordering a Lumia 520 and 32GB mSD card. It was definitely way under budget, which I am happy about. I'll see how I like the WP interface and battery life, but it will have to suck pretty bad to mar the $67 price. If it works out well enough I might invest in a battery or two as well.

Still happy with WP8 even though I am not target audience. Never put in my SIM card, but have joined dozens of Wifi networks, and installed tons of games. Between that, Tapatalk, and email, this has easily been the best $60 tech investment in a long time. I went ahead and renewed my dumb phone contract at $10 a month for two more years because it seems like Wifi is so accessible.

It is kind of a pain to have to carry two devices, but not nearly as painful as paying $25 monthly over my family plan to get data I can live without until being at a multitude of wifi spots.

 

[natto fire]

5 months later, my Nokia collects dust now that I have upgraded to a real smart phone, data and all.

For some reason the WP OS likes to make copies of songs on an SD card. Microsoft reassured me that it was one artist making multiple versions of the same song, but I I discovered their placation ruse pretty quickly. It also caused a huge delay when trying to load a random shuffle from said card, like 5-10 minute delay. I chalked some of it up to the neutered hardware at the $60 OTD price point. but Microsoft's response to the whole thing made me realize why they are clamoring to 1% market share. They might want to take some pointers from RIM on how to bungle the mobile market just enough to keep some stragglers.

I have a Galaxy S5, and it works great for me. The battery life is kind of shit, but I came from a dumb phone that could go 3 days without charging, so maybe I am being overly sensitive.