Input on AGPTek mp3 players/waterproof mp3 players

[issybird]

I'm looking for any input at all about AGPTek mp3 players, especially their reliability. I see some here have them, but I thought I'd start a new thread.

Swimming season is on the horizon and my trusty waterproof mp3 player by Aerb has now got me through five summers and I was thinking it's time to have a backup on hand. (I also have no clue at all regarding how long I can expect it to last between charges and while I don't mind charging it every day if necessary, I do want it to last long enough for a long swim plus the hike through the woods when I go to the lake.) Alas, the latest iteration Aerb seems to be no longer available. I know they weren't the most highly reviewed waterproof players out there, but I had no complaints at all.

So AGPTek seems to have the cheapest current option with decent reviews. Should I have any concerns? I'll also consider other recommendations, but I don't want to spend too much. While Audible compatibility would be nice, it's not necessary; I got along fine with Downpour and OverDrive as the sources for my Aerb.

[Catlady]

I love mine. I have the 8gb version of this model. After two and a half years of heavy everyday use, it's still going strong, though it has lost some battery life. Originally, it did have close to the advertised 24 hours on a single charge; now it may be about 15 hours or so, which is still great.

It doesn't support DRM-ed files, so no Audible. I use it exclusively for audiobooks. I haven't added a micro SD card, so I don't know if there are any issues with it reading from a card. The clip on the back is still working fine--a major selling point for me. I would definitely buy one again.

[silverraven]

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I've got one of each. Ruizu and AGPTek are both brands to consider for a cheap decent player.
All still work great, I use them quite a bit. No Audials support on any of them, but since they are easily 'fixed' I don't worry about that.
All still have decent battery life. I use a microSD card in each of them, no problems with that.
Yes, the Sansa Clip+ was better. I've never found anything as good. But for the price of these little players I can't complain. Just make sure your books are tagged correctly!!
S

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Catlady

I love mine. I have the 8gb version of this model. After two and a half years of heavy everyday use, it's still going strong, though it has lost some battery life. Originally, it did have close to the advertised 24 hours on a single charge; now it may be about 15 hours or so, which is still great.

It doesn't support DRM-ed files, so no Audible. I use it exclusively for audiobooks. I haven't added a micro SD card, so I don't know if there are any issues with it reading from a card. The clip on the back is still working fine--a major selling point for me. I would definitely buy one again.

Originally Posted by silverraven

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I've got one of each. Ruizu and AGPTek are both brands to consider for a cheap decent player.
All still work great, I use them quite a bit. No Audials support on any of them, but since they are easily 'fixed' I don't worry about that.
All still have decent battery life. I use a microSD card in each of them, no problems with that.
Yes, the Sansa Clip+ was better. I've never found anything as good. But for the price of these little players I can't complain. Just make sure your books are tagged correctly!!
S

Thank you, both.

I went ahead and pulled the trigger on this one, but from Walmart where it was $5 cheaper.

[haertig]

All those links above (except for the Walmart one) are dead (listed as "no longer available"). I did manage to pick up a "Used - Like New" Ruizu X26 the other day. It was at one of the links above, but I must have bought the last one, because that link is now dead. This Ruizu is due to be delivered by UPS today. It was only $6.61, so I couldn't resist. We'll see what "Used - Like New" means in Amazon descriptions. I bought a Sansa Clip (and a Fuze also) that were refurbs several years ago (ten?) The control wheel on the Fuse died maybe two years ago, but the Clip is still hanging in there. I hope it never dies. But I bought this little Ruizu X26 for the day the Clip does die - it's inevitable.

p.s. - One of the links above that used to go to an AGPTEK G05 now jumps to the G15, a different model. I haven't seen any reports about this model specifically. I wish I would have bought the G05 back when it was available. Good reports on it several months ago (by the same folks replying to this thread). But I put off the purchase for a tad to long, and now it's no longer an option.

[haertig]

You asked for reports on the AGPTEK players. I'll give you info on my Ruizu player that was just delivered today,since I don't have an AGPTEK one. Looking at the pictures of these players on Amazon, my hunch is that they are all the same generic Chinese offerings, just with different brand names attached to them. By their looks anyway. I don't know if they really are the same players of not however.

OK, for the Ruizu X26 player: It is cheap. Both in cost and in construction. It is nowhere near the construction quality of my old Sansa Clip and Fuse players. It feels very loose and flimsy. The manual is basically "Press difernt bootons to make change to oparatiion". Thankfully, the menus default to English, so there is that going in your favor. Once you figure out that the Chinese like to use left and right buttons to move up and down in the menus you're halfway home. The second half of the way home is to learn that sometimes to select an option you should hit the "select" button, and other times you should hit the "menu" button. OK, got it. Randomness rules. How often are you going to want to use those silly buttons anyway?

Next, you should devise an escape plan in case something unexpected happens. Sometimes you will be holding a button down, say, to advance forward a few seconds in an audiobook. Admire the skill of the software programmer as you watch the time advance in fits and bursts, sometimes at a rate of 1 second per 3 seconds of button push, sometimes at a rate of 5 minutes per 2 millisecond button push. They must have used advanced algorithms to be able to predict that when you let up on the button you really didn't mean to, so it keeps on advancing without the bother of you having to instruct it to. Your initial reaction might be to hurriedly press the advance button again in some futile attempt to cancel the fast forward, but don't do that. You will get thrown into some other file with that move. The correct technique is to push and hold the button. That works pretty well, sometimes. I guess you are supposed to confuse the device with your actions just like it confuses you with its decisions - you work out some kind of uneasy truce that way. If they could manage to harness the aura of this device, I think they have invented a nearly perfect platform for generating randomness, say for crypto applications and such.

BTW, I am learning celestial navigation - you know, astronomical bodies, with a sextant, on a ship, calculating with sight reduction tables, etc. - and that is way easier than navigating this device.

But I got it. I copied over the same audiobook that I am currently listening to on my Sansa Clip. Took a while to transfer. They must be using USB 0.00001beta. Started listening and thought, "What, did they change the narrator?" Nope, it's just that the supplied ear bugs are slightly worse sounding than two tin cans with a string stretched between them.

Next up was experimenting with having it remember my place in the audiobook. Any normal person would not be able to figure this out. Because you can't use the on/off switch (that makes it forget). But a thought stored in the back of my brain, probably something I read here on these forums, told me to push and hold the play button to turn it off. Hey! That made the thing count to three - right there on the screen - and say "bye". And lo and behold, it remembered where I was when I turned it back on!

Now that I've listed all the positives of this little MP3 player, let's get on to the negatives. Oh nevermind. You've probably already got the picture. If your eyesight has gone downhill as you age, like mine, and audiobooks are now what you use, if you find yourself in the situation where this MP3 player is the only thing available - skip it, and learn Braille instead.

This device would be about an 1/2 by 1 MOA target at 200 yards, and I think that's what I'll probably end up using it for. Six dollars and sixty one cents down the drain. Oh well, ... "Sansa Clip - please don't ever die!"

[ElizabethBrown]

Hey,

please suggest me other good products.

[SeaBookGuy]

A lesson on trusting one's intuition ...

I had a perfectly good Sansa Clip+ around the time they were going out of production, but bought a second one "on instinct" which today is barely used. The first one still works fine; the clip broke off, which doesn't matter to me at all.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by SeaBookGuy

A lesson on trusting one's intuition ...

I had a perfectly good Sansa Clip+ around the time they were going out of production, but bought a second one "on instinct" which today is barely used. The first one still works fine; the clip broke off, which doesn't matter to me at all.

I have several Zip's and Plus's. I find myself using them less each day and using my Echos and phones as my primary listening devices.

[haertig]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

I have several Zip's and Plus's. I find myself using them less each day...

If you're interested in selling one at a normal used unit price (not the eBay scalping prices - ugh!) then let me know.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by haertig

If you're interested in selling one at a normal used unit price (not the eBay scalping prices - ugh!) then let me know.

How about a Clip Sport with a broken clip? If interested, PM me.

[haertig]

Originally Posted by Catlady

How about a Clip Sport with a broken clip? If interested, PM me.

Thanks for the offer. But I am looking for one that will run Rockbox 3rd party firmware. That is the original Clip, the Clip Zip, and the Clip+. Unfortunately none of the other (newer) Clip versions will run Rockbox. Then the problem becomes, once you find one of these older Clip versions that will run Rockbox, how is the battery? Most are already dead, or on their last legs.

I'm afraid that I will not find a satisfactory old Clip (me, and the 5 bazillion other Rockbox uses that are searching for one!) So I'm hoping that some new MP3 player will have good firmware for listening to audiobooks built-in, so as not to require Rockbox. But many of the newer MP3 players I have researched just don't lend themselves to audiobooks. They lack the ability to bookmark, for example. Or the FF and REW are so slow that it would take forever to move your place in a book. Or they are made so cheaply and function so intermittently that they are mostly unusable. That is the case with the Ruizu player that I just bought (I think it's probably a quality control thing with intermittent buttons), but also, the firmware just does not function logically - but you could probably use the illogical software if you had no other choice.

[Catlady]

Oh well. I have several Clip Zips, but I don't want to part with them.

I tried Rockbox once--I think on an old Clip+ I no longer have--and just hated it, though I can't remember why. Clearly I am in the minority!

[haertig]

Originally Posted by Catlady

I tried Rockbox once--I think on an old Clip+ I no longer have--and just hated it, though I can't remember why. Clearly I am in the minority!

Rockbox is actually overly complex IMHO. If you're not a geeky engineer (like me!) then it probably is not ones cup of tea.

I actually use only a small bit of Rockboxs features. Namely, the configuration part. e.g., I can configure it to automatically set a bookmark whenever I turn off the player. e.g., I can configure it so that the forward and back buttons will never skip to the next or previous track (otherwise it is very easy to accidentally hit a button wrongly and loose you place in the audiobook). e.g., I can configure how much time forward and back a button push will change the audiobook position. e.g., I can configure it to automatically rewind my place in the audiobook XYZ amount of time when I first turn on the MP3 player after not having used it in a while (so I can rehear and reorient myself as to what recently happened in the audiobook). e.g., I can configure what the display says (default is normally to display how far forward you have played in a track, but I want it to display how far I've gone AND how much time I have left at the same time). e.g., I can configure it to display my battery remaining time in percent (a number) rather than as a battery icon with only a rough estimate of power remaining.

It's all this configurability that makes Rockbox so good. Actually using it - the user interface - is maybe too complex however. This is the tradeoff ... more configurability almost always means more complexity in software. This is why engineers love Rockbox, and normal people hate it!

[silverraven]

My son found a brand new in the box Clip + at the Goodwill computer store last week. So far the battery is as good as the ones I bought when they were still being made. I'm a happy mama!
S
Oh, I didn't like Rockbox either. I just don't need all that, I'm happy with the standard firmware on the Sansas.