Al D. writes:

What’s gonna be the best bang for my buck in a sub $150 music player? I’m thinking maybe not the ipod.

When it comes to MP3 players, there’s iPod and then there’s everything else. If you’re planning on buying an MP3 player for someone else this year, just get them an iPod—it’s still the easiest thing to use from start to finish and there are countless accessories available for them to buy at every local shop. At $150, your only two iPod options are the 2GB iPod Nano (my personal favorite of the iPod flavors, with no moving parts, killer battery life, yet the same screen and click wheel as the full-sized players) and the iPod shuffle, which is $80 for a 1GB player with an extremely basic interface (but great aesthetics and form factor).

What the iPod doesn’t provide, though, is music subscription services, where a person can pay a flat monthly fee and rent all the music they want. (iTunes Music Store, while easy, slick, and fully-stocked, gets expensive fast at $1 a song.)

If music subscription intrigues you, I’d suggest one of the SanDisk Sansas, like this $180 e260R, with 4GB of flash memory, the ability to play videos, and trial access to the Rhapsody To Go all-you-can-eat music service, which is regularly $15 a month. The Sansas are totally capable music gizmos and if you’re interested in an music subscription service, Rhapsody + Sansa is the combo to beat.

Even better, you can often get good deals on Sansa units for far under MSRP. The e280, an 8GB player that isn’t branded by Rhapsody but works just fine with it, is only $180 on Amazon right now. Compared to the $200 4GB iPod nano, that’s a pretty good deal. (Is the iPod nano a better unit? Yes, but that doesn’t make the Sansa bad, unlike MP3 players of yesteryear.)

How about the Microsoft Zune? It’s getting a bit of a bum rap right now, but it’s too expensive and too limited to really justify the price at the moment. And besides, once you learn to deal with the space restrictions of a flash memory-based player, you’ll find it’s hard to go back to ones that use a fragile had drive.

In short: Get an iPod for anyone who wants a gift, but consider the Sansa + Rhapsody for yourself.

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