I've never looked into getting a DAP until now, so I know nothing about them other than what DAP stands for.

I'm looking to get a flash-based unit and would like to know if any particular player is known for having much better or worse battery life than other models? Any particular models to avoid b/c of proprietary battery formats or anything like that? Sound quality isn't a top priority as the unit will be used in a somewhat noisy environment, but I'd like to get 4-5 hours of playback time before I'd need to recharge (I don't mind recharging daily). 99% of my music collection is lossless (WavPack), but I suppose I wouldn't mind transcoding down to a lossy format for use with the player.

Any advice is much appreciated. Thanks.

My MuVo met your criteria easily. About 10 hours from 1 NiMH AAA cell.
The batteries came in a 2 pack for about $10 Canadian.Lasted about 4 years.Still work as far as I know.

Any DAP will give you 5 hours. The ipods are known for "poor" battery life and generally get between 10 and 20 hours off a charge.

I'd recommend an Ipod nano. Its flash based, and has way more battery life then you need. If you install rockbox on it, it can even play wavpack, however this would be a bad idea on a flash player. It does use an internal battery (almost all DAPs do), but this is a good thing IME since it will charge the battery as you copy music over, and its generally easier to just plug the player into your comp when you get home and let it charge/sync then to sync it and then remember to take out the batteries and put them in a charger later. At least that was my experience. The batteries are good for 12-18 months before capacity drops off, but replacements are <$10 shipped, so its not a big deal to replace them.

That said, if you actually want to listen to lossless, buy a 30 or 60GB hard disk player

Finally, if you listen in noisy places, buy a set of inner ear buds that will provide some isolation. If you listen in noisy areas, you tend to let the volume creep up, which can damage your hearing in the long term. A ~30 dollar pair of Sony or Creative buds will help with that and provide much better sound then whatever stock phones you get would provide.

If battery life is your aim, look at this.

On their test it played for 70 hours, but after the battery has had some recharge cycles it should improve further...

Thanks for the replies so far.


I was just reading about the iPod's battery life on the wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipod#Non-replaceable_batteries
It mentions initial replacements costing $99 but that price has dropped since then and that 3rd party vendors offer them even cheaper, but I didn't see anything about them costing less than $10. Is this just a case of the wiki page not being updated? It also says soldering is involved? Geez, how labor intensive is it to own one of these little things?

the samsung mt6x (512mb) i previously owned had a battery life of about 30 hrs on 1 NiMH (2100mAh) AA batt, rechargable of course.. it also had good earplugs that came with it, though it's probably EOL by now.. still, i'd assume the replacements of it are probably ok as well

There are some players sold here in Russia under "QUMO" brand, it seems like the Korean company behind it is also responsible for the "ENOX" line of players. For instance, according to QUMO website, QUMO non-stop works for up to 153 hours off a single charge.

My MSI Mega Stick 256 (USB 2.0 Version) plays (realistically, with some power-off/on, browsing through tracks etc.) about 10h off a single 750mAh NiMH AAA cell, and about 12h off a single new "Varta High Energy" Alkaline cell.

I myself would never buy a player with internal battery, but I think that's just a matter of preference... If I go to long trips, I can just put in a new battery/accu and it'll run another 10 hours. And when I'm home I put my batteries in charger (no discharging needed because it draws the accu fully empty ) and after 2 hours I can use them again. That's really convinient for me. Much better than internal accus because I don't need to have my player plugged into the USB port for hours. My charger can do it much better/faster (it isn't limited to 500mA like the USB port!).

The only drawback of this DAP affecting me is the rather small flash, it's only 256MB, but I can life with that -- thanks to lame -V 5 --vbr-new I fit more than 4 hours on it. But in the days I bought this thing 1GB Flash was the king and way to expensive for me.

But really, I think about any modern flash DAP should meet your criterias.

Hey, this might help answer your question if your looking into a DAP with a Lithium Ion Battery.

It's very interesting and gives you pros and cons of Lithium Ion in DAPs.

I had a Samsung YP-MT6 that consistently got 50 hours per charge, 2400mAh NiMH.
Look at the Samsung Z5 series if you were thinking about a Nano. All the features plus a 30 hour batt life, plus Ogg support out of the box.
Sandisk Sansa e200 series is pretty decent & has user replaceable batt.

Off topic, but does all Samsung's have OGG support? My Samsung YP-T7JX tells me it doesn't support it and stores the songs as just data. I never really played around with my DAP enough to get a definitive answer if it supports OGG. Yet, in the manual, it doesn't say anything about support for OGG.

I saw the Sandisk players yesterday when I was looking around online.... they don't look bad at all.

On the one hand I'd like to find a player that would play my lossless files so I could avoid all the transcoding to MP3, but on the other hand if I got a 6GB player I could load it up with a lot more songs and not have to transfer new material to the player as often.

Get the Cowon IAudio G3.
It uses 1 AA battery and support the excellent OGG Vorbis codec.
For Alkalines it last abot 40 hours, for rechageables NiMH abot 30Hrs.
Newegg has the 2Gb model for $119. And the sound quality is awesome too.
I did tried also the Samsung YP-MT6Z which uses the same Sigmatel chipset in the IAudio G3.
But I ended up keeping the G3 and returning the Samsung.
Amazon also have them if you want to have a Return Policy for your purchase.
Links.
Newegg
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16855603819

Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00080QYR...5439262?ie=UTF8

I hope this help.

The G3 doesn't look bad either, and cheap. Nice that it'll play OGG too since I'm not a big MP3 fan. I just realized that I'm limited to which players I can use since I still use Win98 (98Lite, actually. Figured as long as I made it this far with no issues there's no point in going to XP with Vista just around the corner). The G3 would work with 98 though.

Try the Sony NW-E40x, E50x and A608 players?

50hr batt life for ATRAC, should be no prob achieving over 30hrs for MP3.

The output doesn't sound clean though. And you have to use Sony's app to transfer the songs over.

I have the Samsung Z5. 30+ hrs battery and great sound.
No custom EQ though, just presets.
I like it way better than the Nano I had.

Regarding battery life, I've read that you go through batteries quicker using VBR files vs. CBR files.

1. Is this a substantiated fact? If so, is there a general rule of thumb as to how much more battery life you get using CBR?

2. What about using ABR encoded files?

The new Nano generation 2 has up to 24 hours of battery life, a brighter screen, an aluminum case, and gapless support. Gapless is great for split up audiobooks and live music. You can get up to 8GB Nanos.

No.