[dsr_]

I have a standalone MP3 player the size of a matchbox. (Anybody remember matchboxes?)

The battery is good for 15 hours of play, it takes a 128GB microSD card, and it can play FLAC as well as MP3. The buttons are real and tactile and oriented so that you don't have to look at it to figure them out. It appears as a USB mass storage device with a FAT32 filesystem, so every computer I've used in the last 20 years can put music on it. If you put music in directories, it will navigate the directory structure. If you build m3u playlists, it will use those. You can ask for a random shuffle of all tracks or inside a directory.

It doesn't have play counts or ratings. If you have a USB3 microSD reader, that's faster than updating directly through the USB2 interface.

Also, it's running an open-source alternative firmware called Rockbox.

[runarberg]

Please, I have been looking for a descent music player for a while (since my Creative Zen had a hard drive failure). Did you get yours new or used (if so, which brand? how much money? where from?), did you hack it together your self (if so how)?

[soylentcola]

Probably a Sansa Clip or similar (not too familiar with their current model lineup but it roughly mirrors my experience with them back when I used one).

[dsr_]

I own several Clip Plus models. They're great... and discontinued.

[dsr_]

rockbox.org firmware takes about three minutes to install, and can be uninstalled at any time.