What player would you buy today, to use Rockbox?

[TexasRockbox]

I already have one but would suggest a used iPod 5.5 80GB.  It is relatively easy to disassemble (I can do it without tools), parts are plentiful, the players can be refurbished to look like new, batteries and drives are easily upgraded.  It has decent sound output and quality.  It works great with Rockbox and there are plenty of themes.

[lewisgedwards]

new players now-a-days are just cack. they dont seem to work, break easily, and need to get repaired within a year of use.
although, i did have an mp3 player, first one that i bought after having my one and only portable cd player (which lasted 7-8 years). it was the purple sony walkman one. that was great, does anyone remember.
it did not have any special gimmicks like video or photos (which i think is stupid to have on an mp3 player), it just played music, the perfect player, it was also 20gb in hard drive space, which may not seem like much, but with compression rates that were better than ipod's, i was laughing.
the one gripe was the software (poorly built and only for PC , and that was it, the player was solid, really soild, you could kill someone if you threw it hard enough at them
i would still be using it today, if a bloody bottle of 7up had not burst in my bag right where my player was

i have a 160gb ipod classic now. its good, but is just buggy, but i do love the size of hard drive it does have, plus i did not pay full price for it.

the problem with new players, is that there is no love put into them. its just a product line, spitting out the next update without much thought into them. just more features and more crap that myself, i dont need.
i dont want a video player, i will wait till i get home thank you. also a photo viewer, i will wait till i get home and show you photos a proper size.
yes, it is all well and good to have your media there. but shouldn't these companies really just look at making 'a music mp3 player' again. rather than stuffing it like a turkey, with features that most people dont use.
the cover flow thing on the ipod is a nice touch, but i only had text in my sony walkman and done just fine with reading it. plus the battery lasted a long time as well, since there was no special colors. it was just black background and white, pixelated text

i do hope that there will be a rockbox for the 160gb ipod soon, and have asked already
rockbox, seems to be just a basic display, nothing special, just plays your music and thats it. thats what i want again. simple and too the point

sorry if i have just taken up this space by going on a tiny rant about mp3 players. just wanted to let you all know my 2 cents on this subject.

lewis

[ThaCrip]

While not current, I would buy a Sansa e2xx V1.  It should be very inexpensive even with an 8Gb Micro SD card.  Accessories have even a better price. 

this is my thoughts exactly... because if all you want is a cheap all around solid DAP (Digital Audio Player) then i would say the Sansa e200 (v1) series is hard to go wrong as it's got a user replaceable battery and has a slot for MicroSDHC cards so if you get a cheap 2GB model (like i got) and then add in a 8GB MicroSDHC card you will have a 10GB player for a pretty reasonable price.

because back when i bought my Sansa v1 e250 player (i.e. June 2008 ) i paid about $47 for the player out the door and then not to long ago (i got in late March 2009) bought a Sandisk 8GB MicroSDHC card (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820171371 , currently it's $28.99 /w Free Shipping. but i got mine for $19.99 out the door from that same site back in March) for $19.99 out the door. so basically for 67 dollars i got a 10GB DAP and nowadays i would not be surprised if that same setup could be had for around 50 bucks (maybe less).

you can probably find a cheaper MicroSDHC card as they have some 8GB cards for 20 bucks or less but i went with the Sandisk brand since there generally considered quality... but if your not in a hurry you can probably wait a month or so as the prices seem to vary on that card a moderate amount but i think they raised the price of it as that's the highest i seen it for in a while but it's probably because it's getting more popular as when i bought mine only a couple of reviews where on it and when i got mine for 19.99 it was only about 3 dollars more than some of the lesser cheaper brands so it just made more sence to pay the small premium for a better memory card but at it's current 28.99 i would definitely take my chances with the cheaper (i.e. 15-20 dollar range) ones.

NOTE: that site claims it's a Class4 card but it's NOT, it's a CLASS 2 card! ... but running transfer speed tests on it according to what Vista is telling me i get around 3.5-4MB/s on that card when it levels off on a large single file transfer. so if your transferring a whole bunch of 2-5MB MP3 files it will probably be a little slower than that.

in fact, i just transferred a 700MB .avi file to the 8GB MicroSHDC card and it peaked around 3.95MB/s for the transfer rate according to Windows Vista and the card is roughly Half-ish full and the e250 device is running Rockbox v3.3

it's your call

[soap]

I tend to concur with this. Having recently bought and returned for a refund, a rather expensive Sony Walkman X1000. Kept it for about 3 days. Very disappointed with this player. No gapless playback, no lossless codec support, no Ogg/Vorbis, no games, and worse of all no Rockbox.

I think we can agree in the world of DAPs there are three categories of firmware:
#1 - Rockbox
#2 - Other
#10 - Sony

 

[BruceHP]

As a Legally-Blind RockBox user who counts heavily on Voice and Talk files, I'd like to give equal kudos to the RockBox Utility.  Its code is as important to me as RockBox itself.  I sure would like to try the new svn version.

[amishfury]

i'm good with my e280 i've only used like maybe 5GB of the space on it

[Walrus]

Yeah, the 5.5 iPod is probably the best way to go.

I'm hoping the upcoming Archos Android will either incorporate the rockbox features I use/need (OGG support, Last.fm scrobbling) or that it will be able to support rockbox as an app at some point.  I'm very curious to see what this thing is going to be able to do, especially if it comes with the rumored 500GB hard drive.

[gottahavit]

sansa e280 no question.  almost as small as nano, 16gb of storage, 12+ hours of music playback with rockbox, no end to volume.  I use mine mostly when I bike, charge it like every two weeks.  It's nearly 4 years old been dropped, rained on, sweath through, and covered in dirt more times than I can count.

My friend(similar usage) has been through like 4 nanos in the same period of time and aside from the size the thing is crap.

I have a 30gb ipod video, but it's too big to use what I use my sansa for.

I know my sansa will die someday and I will probably buy another, only other player that interests me is the view.  Only comment is make sure you find a good case that works well with the wheel.

[AlexP]

For a small flash drive (when not worried about recording etc.) I'd have one the Sansas.

For recording, an iriver H100 (H300 second), no question.

For larger capacity day to day, I'd have a gigabeat F or S.

[yelped]

I would get the 8GB Sansa Fuze 100%. Awesome SQ, microSDHC slot, great wheel, Voice Recorder (even though it doesn't work with Rockbox yet), all for.... $65!

It really is an amazing steal.

[TonyTiger]

Oh Man Rockbox is Grrrreat!

I just stumbled upon this site last winter while investigating the purchase of a Sansa c250 2GB Refurbished unit, so for $15, plus another $10 for a 4GB SDHC card (at one of those 2 hour, early a.m. Staples Holiday sales events), I am one happy little cheapskate thanks to Rockbox.

You guys ROCK!

Now I'm looking forward to upgrading to a Sansa e2xx , but how would I avoid the horror of getting a unit that is V2 Firmware? It doesn't seem practical to get that information from most vendors. Could this somehow be discerned from the manufacturer's extended model number that I see on some sites?

Thanks and Congrats on a truly great product.

[MHael]

I would definitely get a 5.5G Ipod. Ipods really are great. Apple's rather fascist design models are what cripples it. I really couldn't ask for a better player than a 5.5 with Rockbox. If you want, you can even reboot to the OF any time, though really I'm not quite sure why you'd want to .

[sr00t]

what a bummer.

Is there anyplace we can all send a letter to hardware manufacturers asking them to use rockbox as their factory interface (and explaining why they will save money on development) or at least open the drivers so that those of us who want can install rockbox?

I really don't know how manufacturers prefer creating firmwares from scratch when all of them suck really bad. Is there one reason for manufacturers to avoid using open firmwares that are exponentially superior to theirs?

[Llorean]

1) They control what's in the firmware, so a lower perceived chance of inviting a patent suit or copyright infringement suit if it turns out not all code really was legal.

2) Don't have to provide their code to someone else (including potential competitors) if they want to include specific features we don't.

3) Don't get stuck providing support (or at least, constantly saying they don't provide support) for third-party software because that third party software now seems "official" to users.

4) Don't have to deal with users complaining about the features they removed from Rockbox (which they invariably will, either over patent fears or over a desire to 'turn off' features that aren't completely stable yet).

5) Don't have to let someone else control their user experience.

Etc, etc.

[gottahavit]

1) They control what's in the firmware, so a lower perceived chance of inviting a patent suit or copyright infringement suit if it turns out not all code really was legal.

2) Don't have to provide their code to someone else (including potential competitors) if they want to include specific features we don't.

3) Don't get stuck providing support (or at least, constantly saying they don't provide support) for third-party software because that third party software now seems "official" to users.

4) Don't have to deal with users complaining about the features they removed from Rockbox (which they invariably will, either over patent fears or over a desire to 'turn off' features that aren't completely stable yet).

5) Don't have to let someone else control their user experience.

Etc, etc.

6) Someone in the office always has a kid who needs a short term development internship.