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

Try water proof bone conduction headphones

You've definitely looked into this with different preferences than me, so apologies if you've already covered this - what about the Echo Mini/Nano? Admittedly the Nano battery life isn't great.

Most of the good audio gear is coming from niche channels direct from China. Moondrop and Fiio/Snowsky are probably the two biggest brands that you'd potentially find in your nearest city if there's an audio shop with a chi-fi bent.

Getting iems with removable cables also helps. I resoldered my Porta Pros with MMCX jacks so that I could replace the cable. It is shit that you can't get anything worth having unless you arguably know too much about the category, but it is out there.

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.

VLC on a phone?

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?)

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.

Obviously it goes into the pocket of your cargo shorts

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.

RIP Zune, the best product Microsoft ever made. Mine died several years ago (the lock switch broke and it was a hassle to turn on/off) but I didn't have the heart to e-scrap it until recently.

With Garmin watches you can drag and drop files over the USB connection. All of mine have worked fine until the battery life degraded enough to not be useful anymore (5-6 years).

Finding a good pair of wireless headphones to go with the watch is another story unfortunately.

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.

FiiO still makes a few reasonably sizes DAPs that could work for running.

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.

My dedicated mp3 player is an old phone

You gotta let it buffer first!

Honestly it was amazing at the time. You could cast to a TV before that concept as it exists today. Automatic album art. Multiple format support. It was even a decent video player.

It looks like it also can't be grabbed through Obtainium. Such a shame.

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?

I have this small Philips mp3 player with 4GB space I bought for 2 euros at a thrift store and it is gloriously offline!

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.

I have a belt now that works surprisingly well. Still stupid to run with a heavy phone but it works.

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 know the pain. I had to use iTunes in a Windows VM. Now I have a Google Pixel with Graphene OS. No problems now.

Sounds like their problem is a phone addiction indeed

Yeah, you just removed the "darker part" with the display and plugged it in a classic usb A right?

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.

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.

I use a Unihertz Jelly Star and I love it!

Navidrome > Tailscale > Symphonium (or any other player)

Buy second hand

You got it!

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.

My old Garmin watch doubles as a mp3 player, is quite nice for running since I don’t have to carry anything

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.

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.

Probably, it's just so absurd to get this kind of error on a manual page lol

Same. I remember it generally held about 65 songs.

And you could use it as a thumb drive too! Just pop it in and slide those mp3s and text giles or whatever in there! 128MB Baby!

Apple: please install our shitty proprietary software everywhere first, and buy all mp3s (again).

What’s your setup there? Can you think of a way to avoid using a smartphone app?

You don’t need the app, at least not for the mp3 player part, just plug it in to a pc and drag and drop into the location

This is however only the case for watches that support mp3s like my venu sq music

Well noted, thanks. Does this work without the Garmin express app?
In this youtube video he shows how to transfer mp3s with the Garmin Express (desktop) app to a venu sq (music)

I know you can use the app for it, but I’ve never done so. No reason to download somthing extra if I do not need to