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My old Garmin watch doubles as a mp3 player, is quite nice for running since I don’t have to carry anything
this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2026
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My husband got me a Creative Zen Micro for birthday and he had added in a bigger HDD and a new battery, it really works like a dream. It was a bit difficult to get around at first as it's from like 2004, but once I realised that I don't need to mess around with my XP PC to get it work, that Gnomad2 exists and works smoother, I'm all good. And the sound quality is so good, 320 kbps MP3. And the player fits into my headphone case!!
// Hubby wants to edit to say that HDD was replaced with SD card adapter + 16 Gb card (only Sanddisc card worked on it.)
I still use my iPod nano.
Seriously why is sending music to an iPhone from a Linux computer not directly possible in fucking 2026? I need to use VLC but its artist grouping sucks, it cannot assign the same track to multiple artists.
Navidrome > Tailscale > Symphonium (or any other player)
I know the pain. I had to use iTunes in a Windows VM. Now I have a Google Pixel with Graphene OS. No problems now.
I have a belt now that works surprisingly well. Still stupid to run with a heavy phone but it works.
I have this small Philips mp3 player with 4GB space I bought for 2 euros at a thrift store and it is gloriously offline!
Yeah I'm old enough to remember how exciting it was when anti-skip CD players came out...
It was so cool I'd run with my CD player in my backpack, but sometimes take it out to violently shake it just to see the glorious technological achievement at work.
And they didn't work at all :D 120 SECONDS ANTI-SKIP BUFFER! proceeds to skip within 5 seconds of jogging
Maybe you had a dud, cuz mine worked great. Biggest issue was how to carry it (Hold it? Put it in a pocket? Strap it onto a limb?)
Obviously it goes into the pocket of your cargo shorts
You gotta let it buffer first!
I had a nomad! it was... .aight...? like, it worked, and with the full size usb-A usb-stick form factor it was easy to load.
Same, I had that exact mp3 player and it still is the easiest to load music player I've owned. Just plug it into any computer and it shows up like a flash drive, drag and drop in your OS file manager. No software, no bullshit. Only downside is the storage space, mine was tiny. I think I could only get like 50 or so songs on it if I remember correctly.
FiiO still makes a few reasonably sizes DAPs that could work for running.
People look at me weird when I tell them I have a dedicated MP3 player instead of using my phone.
No, I don't want to run down my phone battery for music. Yes, I want a device I can leave sitting on the counter playing music that isn't my phone I have to keep walking over to check.
That being said, SO many of the dedicated MP3 players out there are TRAAAAAAAAAAASH. My last one's 3.5mm jack broke after a couple years. My new one's SD card slot broke after 4 months. I guess the best method is just buying the cheapest one so when it breaks you don't feel too bad about it. They're all made by Asian companies that have no website or contact numbers or any kind of presence at all other than the Amazon page they're selling their garbage on.
Buy second hand
If it's just the battery that's the issue, put an inductive charger on the counter.
What do you have to keep walking over to check it?
Sounds like their problem is a phone addiction indeed
It's a phone addiction if someone texts me and I respond?
Why would I want to walk back into a room just to respond to a text when I could just have a dedicated music device that I start and then leave where it is and my phone can come with me?
I'm old enough that I didn't even have a mobile phone until I was in college and it definitely wasn't a smart phone. There is no phone addiction here. Personally, I hate the fucking things. I'm not even responding to you on one.
My dedicated mp3 player is an old phone
You might as well just buy a cheap Android phone to use as a music player. A number of the MP3 players out there are pretty much that anyways, except they actually delete the cellular modem.
The cheap phones are also more likely to have a 3.5mm jack and an SD card slot too.
Yeah I've considered that option. My last few MP3 players really have basically been phones. Touch screen. Android. 3.5mm and SD slot. Just without the cellular. It's the cheapness that's the problem. And that cheapness could still be an issue if I bought a cheap actual smartphone.
To be clear though, the last one I bought was $90-100. So not cheap cheap. I was eyeballing some that were as cheap as $50.
I use a Unihertz Jelly Star and I love it!
I mean, just buy a bluetooth speaker and leave that on your counter. Then you dont even need to walk back to change your music. Playing music doesn't drain your battery that much.
Ugh, I bought one that rythmicaly squeaked when you used decent headphones.
Too lazy to check but do they make any portable music players that support opus and not just mp3?
My Nintendo DS (Moonshell) technically supports vorbis, but it struggles with its 4Mb of memory sometimes lol.
VLC on a phone?
I remember getting a little 128MB USB MP3 player. Carried it with me everywhere until it died.
Years later getting an 8gb Sony MP3 player that just refused to die.
Not able to upload images anymore for some reason, but I love the Sandisk Clip Sport for this.
This seems to be the new version of the clip by sandisk. You would want light but also be able to download a podcast on it and this is always a lot of fiddling with a bare bones thing like that.
So annoying, this problem had been solved long ago and now I need an expensive watch or something to get the experience that an iPod had more than 10 years ago.
I do like this form factor, and have had some offbrand ones, but the color LCD with backlight drains the battery incredibly fast. The monochrome LCD on a Creative basically uses no energy and is perfectly visible out in the bright sun, even when fast forwarding through podcasts or audiobooks. Still, I'll take the physical buttons over a touchscreen that can barely work once I start sweating. Also the physical buttons let me actually CONTROL it while I'm running while still paying attention to where I'm going - no need to take my eyes off anything.
I still have my screenless Creative nomad muvo, and really wanted the one with the screen back then
From the era just after, the Bluetooth audio player + FM radio Sony Ericsson MW600 was absolutely brilliant with a touch sensor along the side for volume and buttons for media controls, and built in selection menu for what to connect to
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The clip broke off mine the very first time I used it :(
I had the one later generation of iPod nano that was a little square touch screen with a clip. That thing was great, I could clip it onto my clothing anywhere and go for a run and it wouldn't move. I miss the days of iPod nanos and classics.
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Maan, I had Exactly that mp3 player, big and bulky and not especially better IMO. You slid out the whole part with the display to access the USB-A IIRC.
You did! I had the same one too and I liked that I never had to try to find the right chord. People hadn't really settled on micro USB for most things yet, so you still had 5 different flavors of usb cable floating around.
Yeah, you just removed the "darker part" with the display and plugged it in a classic usb A right?
You got it!
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