Portable MP3 Players

I am sick of MP3 players.

I held out for a long long time before buying an mp3 player because I was holding out for something that played Ogg formatted files and worked well. I finally cracked and bought a Rio Sport Forge from target on clearance. It doesn't play Ogg files, it has a slot for SD cards and it accepts AAA batteries. I use NiMH rechargeable batteries and it's very convenient to carry a fully charged spare battery with me.

The player was working great. The menu was clear and easy to navigate. I was really happy until it started to glitch out on me and had difficulty turning on. After doing some research, I found out that these types of problems were common because some problem with the memory chips. Also, Rio had just gone out of business so I could not really send it in for repairs.

After that, I ordered a replacement that I thought would be comparable. I bought a SanDisk e140 1gb player that also accepts SD cards for additional storage and AAA batteries.

After using it for a short period of time, I noticed a lot of issues with this MP3 player. It didn't play the songs in the order of the track number or even the artist name which was very upsetting. Also, the quality of the sound was really horrible, through the headphones and my car's stereo input are not the greatest.

I found that SanDisk had firmware for the device on their website that would allow tracks to be sorted by track number and artist name. Also, after tweaking with the equalizer settings, I was able to make the player sound acceptable.

Part of me wants to throw this thing at ebay and get a new MP3 player, but I can't find one that meets all of my needs. I would consider using an iPod if I didn't have to use the iTunes software.

I'll just stick with this thing for now.