Recommendations for MP3 player?

[Bertha Venation]

My gift to my nephew for his 18th birthday in February will be a new MP3 player. I was thinking of an iPhone. What do you know about it?

What about just a plain iPod? Can it play games?

What other MP3 players would you recommend?

Thanks!

[ghostsofgiants]

1. You can get games for iPods from the iTunes store, yeah.

Don't get an iPhone unless he needs a cell phone too. You'd save money by getting an iPod Touch maybe. I have a 160GB iPod Classic, it's good.

This site will probably help you as well: http://dapreview.net

[DarkTirade]

8. I know a lot of people who love their iPod touch

and still keep a seperate normal cel phone. Probably cheaper to have two seperate devices than it is to get an iPhone too.

[ghostsofgiants]

11. My brother has an iPod Touch. It's pretty rad.

[ThomWV]

2. I'm hopin' somebody knowlegable will answer you

I was thinkin' about buying one for myself to listen to during long motorcycle rides. I don't know squat abuot them either. Just got a new phone a couple of weeks ago so incorporating it there is out because I'm way to cheap to buy another phone.

[jxnmsdemguy65]

3. You may want to look at an Ipod nano

I just bought one for birding (you can put bird songs on it (www.birdjam.com). Really nice player, a bit difficult to set up on your computer though.

[JoDog]

7. I got my Nano on Saturday

Pleased with it so far. It comes loaded with 3 games, and you can buy others at the iTunes store. If you get it at Best Buy this week, they're throwing in a free speaker dock with the 8GB model.

[buzzycrumbhunger]

4. iPod

The iPod Touch has a bigger screen for games, but I think they only go up to 16 GB so far. For less money, you can get a ginormous iPod Classic that'll hold 80 GB.

If you get the iPhone, it would involve about $100/mo for the AT&T crap. If you think he'd want the wi-fi capabilities, go with the iPod Touch, which lets you tap in and email when you're hanging around Starbucks with all your buddies who are too cheap to work out of an office.

And unlike most warranties, AppleCare is a worthwhile investment (extends your warranty to 3 years).

[gmoney]

5. iPod Touch does amazing things

It has built-in wifi, so you can use it for web browsing and chatting (if you don't mind the hunt and peck keyboarding), but also internet radio, Pandora.com, stock updates, and other cool "push" types of things. The screen is great for games, and there are a ton of free or very inexpensive ones (under $5) they can download. It plays movies and videos on a nice size screen, can display your photo library, and of course play music and podcasts. You don't get a massive hard drive that will store your entire music library, but enough room to give you plenty of music for a week's worth of listening, then just load new music if you get tired of it. You can also sync it to your datebook and address book, and other documents from your computer.

The Nano and other iPods are nice if you're mainly interested in carrying around a LOT of music or video, or need a very tiny player, but aren't very good for games. There are a few, but mainly stuff like solitaire, pac man, blackjack.

Since you have some time, you might consider ordering a refurbished unit from Apple http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/ipod/ipod_touch -- you can get a very good deal. Or just watch for post-holiday clearance sales at the electronic retailers, especially the ones going out of business. :/

It's really a marvelous thing. If you have iTunes on your computer, you can browse all the applications (App store) available for it and get a rough idea.

P.S. iPhone is nice, but the service plans are still very costly... I think like $70 a month, so unless you/he can justify that monthly expense, the iPod Touch does most of what the iPhone does. (No camera, no GPS, no wireless internet access -- although it can tap into wifi signals at restaurants or in home or on campus.)

[Taverner]

6. First question you have to ask: does he like having a large or small library?

Since iPhones only have at most 8gb

[NYCGirl]

9. I have a 16gb iPhone NT

[Taverner]

10. They've gone up! Wow. Still for me, I need at least 60gb

[Grayscalz]

12. iPhones are awesome

The iPhone is really good (I'm sending this message on one) however, you do have to set up a contract, normally 18 months, so you may have to find out if he is already on a contract phone ect.

You can access games and the Internet on the iPod touch, though it is limited as it does not have a 3G connection, but makes up for this by having a much greater storage capacity.

As for other mp3's, I use to use only Sony mp3 players until I got the iPod video, and I haven't looked back, as far as I can see it is the best mp3 (really mp4) player to have

~G