Archos - 14 Vision - 4GB MP3/MP4 Player w/ FM Radio (501509)

Pros: Worked and cheap

Cons: Small screen

Pros: Sound quality! I have a 200 watt amp I run this through and it sounds beautiful. Plays .flac and well.

Cons: Video is pretty much worthless because of the size and quality of the screen. Bass boast lessens sound quality a noticeably.

Other Thoughts: Wait for it to go on sale. I got it for $20 but knowing what I know now I would pay as much as $30.

I use this thing a lot and run the battery down almost daily. Personally I am impressed the amount of abuse I lay on it and how well it takes it. I have owned it 5 or 6 months now.

No Rockbox sadly.

Pros: - It's pretty cheap!

- Plays music

- Small

- Decent battery life

Cons: - Poor controls and no hold button (buttons get pressed in my pockets)

- Lint and dust has gotten behind the screen

- All of the labeling has been rubbing off.

- Occasionally freezes and restarts (usually accompanied with loud static; it's really unpleasant)

- Power button doesn't always work

- Shuffle feature randomly picks a song on the event of clicking the next button as opposed to generating a random playlist order; i.e. if you skip past a song you wanted to hear on shuffle, you can't go back to play it.

- You cant go Artist -> Album -> Song. You can list only by artist, album, OR song.

Other Thoughts: I'm usually a fan of archos; they generally have well constructed, solid, linux-run media devices. It's great that this was so cheap, and I DO still use it, but if you want to do anything other than listen to songs, get something else. If you just want a cheap mp3 player like I did, it's still alright.

Pros: Works great. 4GB.
Very small, easy in shirt pocket.
Used it in France as a radio while touring for 11 weeks. Nice scan for stations. Great value. More features than I need or use.

Cons: Interface takes some getting used to. Fast click and long click have different meanings. I had to learn to be faster for the fast click.

Other Thoughts: I tried the recorder but haven't needed it. Here I use it mostly while cutting grass (ear buds under the hearing protector ear muffs). I use different ear buds, personal preference. Scan for radio stations uses the ear bud cable as an antenna so how you hold it affects signal strength. Copying albums the player puts the files in sequence copied over so in Ubuntu I wrote a script to copy the files one at a time, not batch so tracks are 1 - 2 - 3 etc.

Pros: It's small, sound quality is pretty good if you use good buds.

Cons: I'll give you a list of bads. 1) It doesn't remember where you were after shut down. cant listen to a book without going through whole thing or guessing where u left off. 2) the on off function is annoying. two actions to get one result. 3) all of the functions are not intuitive. 4) dont buy this to watch movies. well it is a small screen. 5) many many more bugs Its just an annoying reminder of poorly thought out electronics.

Other Thoughts: The only thing I can say about this thing is that it is a good reminder of YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR!!! I think i"ll hang it on the wall above my computer to remind me every time I think a deal is to good to be true it probably is.

Pros: Small and light
Display screen to see content
FM Radio
Easy to load
Charges quickly (less than an hour)
Pressing FF fades-out selection playing before starting next track - nice touch

Cons: Takes a few seconds to turn on
Button functions not clearly defined in manual
Preloaded music, photos, video and conversion software

Other Thoughts: Don't buy for photos or videos - you will be disappointed. The main purpose of the screen is so you can view and select from your library, and that works just fine. Keep the display to its lowest brightness and duration setting and you'll get battery life of six to seven continuous hours - maybe more if you don't FF or pause a lot. I bought a 2nd one for backup.

I work in a loud lab and purchased this specifically to make my own noise cancelling mp3 headphone rig (search net for "Headphone Hack! Noise Eliminating Headphones! video). By attaching this tiny unit with Velcro to one of the external ear muffs and binding up the headphone wire with a few small zip ties I can work wire free while enjoying music or podcasts with the volume at a low level (3 to 5 out of 20) and still protect my hearing. Binding the wire will affect radio reception, which is wonky inside but fine outdoors when mowing the grass. Encode your music at 64kbps (FM quality) and double the capacity!

Pros: None

Cons: Buttons too small, controls don't always work.

Other Thoughts: First one I got didn't work at all, the replacement one only worked about a week. Not worth the aggrevation to send it back. Don't get one, my Zune works just great, but I had cracked the glass so I thought it should be replaced. I'm still using my Zune.

Pros: small easy to navigate through menu's drag and drop from pc to player

Cons: The screen is a scratch magnet buttons are somewhat hard to manage with big fingers

Other Thoughts: Very nice MP4 player for the price

Pros: compact

Cons: Numerous
-short battery life (1-2 hrs, 3 MAX)
-buttons are hard to push, yet easily get hit while MP3 player is in your pocket !
-shuffle play is..amazingly predictable (repeatable)
-screen fills with dust
-buttons are extremely close to one another, likely to hit the wrong one (volume up/down, seek +/-)
-2 separate power buttons (1 button, 1 switch)
-takes 5-15seconds to TURN ON
-Impossible to Resume a song from where you left off after last power-down
-pics/images/video are a non-event (poor software conversion & fuzzy playback)

-no longer turns on after 7 months of ownership (dead). Experienced no unusual usage or abuse.

Other Thoughts: Now using my 6yr old creative zen as an interim until my new Creative zen300 player shows up from amzn.

Find Something else to waste 30-40 bucks on...

Pros: storage device

Cons: I received one that would not turn on. Paid to return it to Newegg. Received replacement, charged it using usb cord supplied and after undocking the device, I tried turning it on and again, no luck. It was a present for now 7 year old. At least she can use the headphones I bought to go with this mp3 to listen to the TV.