mp3 podcasts

Not really anything to add by way of podcasts, but posting to say I'm a big fan of the Sansa Clip series.

I think the Clip+ is the best of the lot and you can get them for under $30 when they're on sale. The sound quality is very good (better than most common players, and a definite cut above your phone). I'd suggest installing Rockbox, as the standard firmware is a little clunky/slow, and drains the battery. Mine, with headphones weighs under 1.5oz.

You could argue that your phone doubles as an mp3 player and you'd be right, but the battery life on the Sansa Clip+ (again, using Rockbox and conservative power settings) is about 15-20 hours of continuous play. The battery life of my phone drains a hell of a lot faster than that.

I wish they made a Sansa Clip that was waterproof/shockproof

The fact that it's so light makes it somewhat shockproof

I believe the Sport model is supposed to be water resistant (against sweat).

Yeah, I've dropped mine a ton (not on concrete) and it's been fine. Since it doesn't have a spinning HDD, there's a lot less to go wrong.

I got a clip, fried it by charging with car charger that put out 12V

I got another, hit it on the side and the volume up button broke so all I could do is turn the volume down

I got a sport and it's been okay for a while

I have a couple clip zips and a clip+. Great players being able to run rockbox. Format a 64gb card to FAT32, good to go.

In terms of podcasts, I like Freakanomics and Wait-wait Don't Tell Me.

Steve

I have an old Sansa Clip that worked great for me. But about 5 years ago, I put it in a drawer and started listening to all my podcasts and music on my phone. I kept the Clip around as a backup.

I just gave my 6+ year old clip to my son, and its still working great.

I used to use "Podcatcher on a stick" (http://www.rotzoll.de/podblogger/mp3stick/) to manage my podcasts. I loved how it resided on your device, and automatically started downloading when you plugged it in to a usb port. No hassle. No need to have a pc based podcast management software package that just pushed content to your device. Everything resided on the stick.

Before the clip, I used a Samsung YP-MT6 mp3 player (http://www.cnet.com/uk/products/samsung-yepp-yp-mt6/). It was a bit larger than the clip, but that was due to it taking a AA battery. Rechargeables were just coming in to vogue when I bought it. It lasted me 4 or 5 years of hard use before it gave up the ghost. The best feature about the Samsung was the battery life was like 40 hours. If I were thru hiking, I would be looking for something like that…. and putting podcatcher on a stick on it.

I have only used an iPod, but I like the fact that the Sansa has an expandable memory. I'm nearly maxed out on my iPod for capacity, and don't want to limit my music library or podcast listening. How much trouble would it be to convert my library to straight mp3 files to play on the Sansa? If people aren't using iTunes, where are you accessing podcasts?

And a total girl question, how come the pretty colors don't come in 8 GB?

Colors??? I know something has gone to the "marketing" dogs when they offer various colors : )

I had 4 gig version but it wasn't quite big enough, 8 gig better

8 gig has enough for maybe 1 week total of listening. 1 gig is maybe 20 albums of music so I have a selection to choose from. maybe 10 different podcasts with a bunch of episodes. I'll usually have a couple podcasts I've listened to some of and will eventually get back to. Maybe a couple I listened to some but then got tired of…

Wired used one on all three of her triple crown hikes(if you read her thru hike journals she used it a lot),here are her post hike reviews(they pretty much say the same for each post hike review) Complete PCT Thru Hike Gear Review
Complete CDT Thru Hike Gear Review
Appalachian Trail Gear Review
I don’t think she is particularly careful, she usually loses stuff on all her hikes.

"I have only used an iPod, but I like the fact that the Sansa has an expandable memory. I'm nearly maxed out on my iPod for capacity, and don't want to limit my music library or podcast listening. How much trouble would it be to convert my library to straight mp3 files to play on the Sansa? If people aren't using iTunes, where are you accessing podcasts?

And a total girl question, how come the pretty colors don't come in 8 GB?"

Just get the 4 GB in whatever color you like and get a Micro SD card for the extra capacity. Cheaper that way as well. They support up to 32 GB cards. I haven't tested it but I'm assuming that the "refreshing media" thing after a sync will probably take longer as you go up in size. So i just put an 8 GB card in it. 12 GB is plenty of music/podcasts not only for a trip but to carry around in general.

You can convert mp4 to mp3 in either Itunes or Windows Media Player. But you'll probably want to get a 3rd party app to do it in bulk. We have both Ipods and mp3 players but I've ripped everything in mp3 so I haven't looked into converters.

I mostly download the podcasts I like directly from their sites. But you can download them as you usually do in Itunes and then just convert them before putting them on the Clip.

I'm always looking for interesting podcasts. Anyone have any suggestions?

Wait-wait Don't Tell Me looks good. Thanks!

Since this is BPL, might as well put in a plug for The Trail Show, which is a backpacking podcast by Pmags and his friends. You can find it at http://thetrailshow.com/.

I had a clip zip, and it died after a year of heavy use building trail in nevada. I think dust killed it. Now I just use my phone.

I'd buy the 4GB model in whatever color you'd prefer. The 8GB model isn't worth the premium when you consider you can stick a 128GB microSD card into any of the Sansa Clip models–a measly 4GB is meaningless at that point.

Also, converting .m4as (that's what Apple uses, right?) to .mp3s isn't necessary with Rockbox–in fact, I believe the native Sansa firmware handles .m4as no problem.

I strongly recommend installing Rockbox on your Sansa Clip. You'll have better, more customizable sound (you can change all the EQ settings to suit your preference), better battery life, easier navigation, and almost unlimited options to customize how your device works (user interface, brightness, time out, locking functions, playback functions, etc).

The native Sansa firmware is really slow and clunky, especially when it comes to navigation and updating your file database (which happens every time you connect/disconnect it from your computer). I have a [not full] 32GB card in my Sansa ClipZip right now and it takes the native firmware about 10-15 minutes for it to rebuild my database when I disconnect it. I believe the Sansa firmware has an upper limit of about 8,000 songs too, so unless you Rockbox your Sansa, you'll be limited to about a 32GB memory card.

There are other mp3 players (none of which are particularly light weight) on the market that take multiple microSD cards if you're pushing the 128GB limit.