Ok is the I-Pod by Apple the best way to go or are the Creative Lab and SanDisk versions good too?

Question

The non Apple ones are cheaper but are they as good?

Answer 1

You get what you pay for. Apple technology is superior.

Answer 2

The Creative Labs Zen is awesome. The SanDisk is good, and I personally use an i-river mp3 player because I travel all the time and the i-river uses a standard AA battery that I can switch out when it dies instead of having to charge which can be difficult on long trips... and a single battery is better than lugging around a charger.

When at home I use the Zen, its comparable to an ipod mini.

But if you like all the acessories you'll hate yourself once you buy anything but an ipod.

Answer 3

yes Sandisk and Creative mp3 players are very good. The only difference between the non apple mp3 players and apple mp3 players is that apple has tons of accesories. The quality of all 3 companies are the same.

Answer 4

I love my Creative Zen Vision M and my wife really likes here Zen Microphoto. (She doesn't fall in love with electronics :^). The Zen Microphoto is nice, light, portable, reliable. She has the Traveldock and uses it as a mini boom box around the house and on her long drives to the mountains (4 hours).

I have my ZVM in my car and listen to it too and from work and around town. I have Yahoo Music Engine on my laptop at work so I use that rather than listening to the ZVM.

I just bought a Vaja leather case for the player. Pretty sweet. I'm waiting for Alpine to come out with their KCA-620M PlaysForSure / USB adapter and then I'm getting a new Alpine head-end for my one car that will display the tracks. Even without this head end, a Sony CPA-9C cassette adapter sounds amazingly good in my other car.

I just spent the weekend experimenting with ripping come music videos from the most recent episodes of Rock Star Supernova so I could watch them on my player. This particular process is difficult whether you have an iPod, Zen, or other device. When the new TiVo Series 3 comes out, I'm upgrading to it and will get TiVo To Go to do the show transfers in the future which will be much easier.

The reasons I think the ZVM is superior to the iPod 30GB are the following:

1) It works with subscription music services such as Yahoo Music Unlimited To Go, Rhapsody To Go, and Napster To Go so you can fill the player for as little as $10 a month (about 5000 high quality subscription songs will fit). I have over 1400 songs on my player now, most of which are subscription tracks. I add 20 - 40 a month. Much much cheaper than iTunes. iPod doesn't support subscription music.

2) Better quality video display than iPod 30GB. 262,000 colors versus 65,000.

3) Longer battery life for video. 4 hours of video vs 2 hours of video on 30GB iPod.

4) More sources for music for PlaysForSure compatible (read not iPod) music players including the Zen players.

I've heard good things from some co-workers about the Sansa line of players from SanDisk. I particularly like their iDon't campaign.

Answer 5

iPod is ahead of all the competition. The main advantages are the amount of accessories available, this influenced me to buy one. I would of much preferred a non proprietary make (itunes is awful software for example) but the manufacturers and 3rd party products and support don't exist for anything else. This may change in the future but for now go Apple. If you can wait a few months, Microsoft are launching their first foray into the arena, and in my experience it will be good.

Answer 6

I love my iPod, I have no complaints at all (will be upgrading to 30gb soon). My nephew has a Creative Zen and he b*tches about it all the time- it had a tendency to 'loose' songs & the battery dies pretty quick.

Answer 7

The iPod is good so it the Creative Lab's Zen. If you can wait a few months, Microsoft will releases its own media player, which is sure to please.

Answer 8

Ipod. It makes the rest seem cheap by its construction.