I want to get less reliant on my phone and go out more without it. One of the big use cases for my phone is music.
I have a lot of local music files and I would like to transfer them to a mp3 player. I would prefer something offline that I can drag files too. Also Bluetooth would be a plus so I can continue to use my earbuds.
Something easy to navigate would be ideal too. Basically like what iPods were like with a small screen where you can navigate easily and see album artwork.
I went through this a year or two ago.
You can get an expensive MP3 player, which I didn’t really want to do cuz I think MP3 players should be relatively cheap, largely because they take a beating as you carry them around with you. Or get lost.
You can get a cheap Chinese knock-off brand MP3 player on Amazon, which is what I ended up doing. I have some regrets, but it’s still working, so whatever. The main thing you need to understand about cheap MP3 players is they may not properly power your headphones if you have a nice set of headphones. I only really use my MP3 player with my bluetooth speaker, so it didn’t matter for me. But it absolutely sucks when I’m trying to use headphones with it. Sound is super low, even when maxed out.
Or you can just buy a relatively cheap phone, never activate cell service on it, and use it as an MP3 player, which is probably what I’ll do next time. Even cheaper phones have tons of storage and decent specs for powering at least ear buds, if not actual headphones.
Ask yourself if you want a touch screen. That was my main thing. I wanted a touch screen like the iPod Touch so I’m not using some awkward buttons to navigate my huge music library. And I wanted Android so I could install whatever apps I wanted for playing my music. The cheap knockoff MP3 player I got came with an old version of Android, probably on purpose to limit resources used. But I can’t update it, so I can never update the apps I threw on it when I first got it. When I was looking I didn’t see any of these cheap MP3 players with a modern Android version on it. So they’ve gotta be using cheap hardware that just can’t handle running modern Android versions.
The one really good thing about my cheap MP3 player is it came with a 120gb SD card. So all my music is stored on that. If the device eats shit, I could take that SD card out, put it in another SD card compatible device, and boom, all my music is still there, still organized into the folders I put them in. If you choose to use a cheap phone as your MP3 device, I don’t think any are going to have the SD option anymore.
I guess ideally the best device would be a high-end MP3 player with a touch screen and modern Android. But when I was looking, I wasn’t really seeing any that had touch screen and Android. And they’re pricey.
I’m not a huge Apple fan, but the iPod Touch really hit the right spot. Maybe not that great of a battery life, but whatever. My cheap MP3 player does have a pretty big battery.
All in all, my search was pretty frustrating as I felt like I couldn’t find anything that ticked all my boxes. So I’m basically just posting this to give you an idea of what to take into account as you’re looking. Good luck.