portable mp3 player

Fiio X1 if you want something that will play anything (even DSD), has line out and costs you less than £100.

Xduoo X2 is tiny and phenomenal value for money.

Currently trying out a Cowon Plenue D. Sounds good but the user interface is a bit laggy.

 

My X1 won't play DSD.

 

I'd go with the X3. I found the sound on my X1 to be acceptable for $99, but a little underwhelming compared to my 1st-Gen X3.

 

My bad - my ibasso DX50 does.

 

+ 1 on the Sony. A friend has one and it can take a 128 card plus it has internal storage. Best Buy supposedly will have them in store Friday the 13th.

 

I had mp3 for years, and they were diabolically close to almost sounding good enough and oh-so-clever and convenient but ultimately they became irritating to listen to ... literally. I have been collecting SACD, DVDa and BluRay and I've replaced the cartridge on my old turntable and finally I found a Pono at a decent price and I find it exceeded my expectations. Naturally I recommend that but there are *a lot* of options that will play flac files, in my case cd-rips that don't suck now. Whichever you get you'll likely be happier or you likely wouldn't even be reading this page ;~} .... They have the same clever convenience I liked about mp3 and the sound quality is there. enjoy, life's too short for sound that sucks.

 

How come FiiO moved away from the Wolfson DAC in the X3? I thought my 1st Gen X3 sounded better via the line out than my X1 via the line out.

 

I recently found an ipod generation 5.5 with the Wolfson DAC. I bought it used for $50 and plan on putting either a 500gb or 1 tb SSD into it when I have time and money. The plan is to then jailbreak it and load Rockbox in order to use it to play all my flac files. Even stock the thing sounds amazing with a good quality mp3.

 

What members have said about Sansa Clip+ and Clip Zip being a good MP3 players is right, but now since they're all discontinued, probably you're going to find the Clip Jam or the Clip Sport the standard for an MP3 player.
But, if you're looking for something that plays lossless formats like FLAC, I recommend AGPTEK A12 the newest MP3 player with a Clip, it has 8GB of internal storage, a 35 hours battery life with an OLD Display to preserve more battery, and it supports an SD Card up to 32 GB, and it ranges between $25 - $30 on Amazon.
If you're looking for an MP3 player check MP3PlayerAdvisor.com to see a comparison between different type of MP3 players.

 

Fiio M3 at $55 on Amazon isn't a bad choice either.

FiiO M3 - Digital Portable Music Player »