Hi I've had a Creative Zen Vision:M for a few years but its starting to give up on me so I'm looking to replace it!

Can anyone give me some recommendations for a new mp3 player? I've got about 20GB of music and mostly just use my player for when I'm commuting. Is an iPod touch worth the extra money?

Not for the audio playback. For all the bells and whistles yes. If you want audio quality in the first place I'd stay away from apple.

I have to agree with Ivan. I currently have an Ipod Touch and use it for listening to music and also use it for the apps. However, as a music player, the sound is terrible compared to previous mp3 players I have owned in the past (Walkman, Creative Zen Touch). The sound is just too tinny and not as rich as the previous mp3 players I have owned.

I am currently looking into buying a decent mp3 player with excellent sound quality and so far the popular brands seem to be Cowon and Sony. I will keep my Ipod Touch, but use it for the apps only. If you are a music lover, like me, and want a quality sounding mp3 player, then I wouldn't recommend an Ipod Touch.

I love my Zune!

Hmm if was going to buy a new mp3 player I would definitley go for the touch, not necesairly for the audio capabilites but for everything else, wifi conectivity, all the apps, video playback, internet conectivity etc. I wouldnt even bother with anything else to be honest.

I have an iphone 3G and and ipod nano. I also had a ipod classic until the other half lost it. I was going to replace the classic but didnt even think replacing it with another classic was worth it. Only considered the touch, however now I've decided to just upgrade my iphone early to the 4.0 and go for the 32GB version instead.

Take your favourite set of headphones to some shops and listen to the players they have. Don't listen to people on the internet telling you what sounds good and what doesn't, they're your ears and it's your music.

Anika you sound like a typical crApple fan. The OP is asking about reccommendations for a mp3 player, so why on earth would they not take the audio capabilities into consideration.? If the OP wanted a media player surely they would have stated that.

I haven't used any other MP3 players extensively so I can only give an ipod as a recommendation. The point I was making is that I find something which can do more than just play music of better value than something than can only play songs. The OP did not say he was overly concerned about sound quality. If they had I wouldnt have made a recommendation as I have no expreience with other players to say which is the best for sound. Plus the OP did ask about the touch. I didnt just say it for the sake of it. I think you just want to have an anti-apple rant, but you are aming thins at the wrong person because I'm not overly keen on apple the only products I have are ipod/iphone. I have no intention of getting a Mac or ipad and wouldn't recommend them to anyone else as I dont know anything about them!!!

I concur with the above that for audio quality stay away from the iPod/iTouch, nice gadget but pretty poor when it comes to audio quality. I use a Sony NWZ A series to listen to music and the iTouch to play with

I'd dearly love Sony to make a larger capacity mp3 players as my 16GB one is always full.

I found the 2GB Sony NWZ A815 to be quite awful in comparison to my 20GB Sony NW-HD5 hard drive player.

The HD5's Atrac format dynamic sound tended to win out in listeners tests.
The A815 was ok, just a bit on the flat side.
Cant say I listen to mine much at all now.

Wonder what I would now get for the HD5?
I gave away the smaller one as a Xmas gift

I have ZuneHD 32GB, but I did not want to mention it as it is relatively expensive and I do not know if it is yet available in UK. I love it, the sound quality is excellent, but as always it helps to buy better headphones. And I like that it can play XVID AVI files now, too. But also MP4 and WMV. As for audio files, it plays MP3, M4A, WAV, WMA. UI looks great.

Sony had some cracking HD based players back in the day, they obviously decided to just give up with that part of the market.

I've had/have a few gens of iPods - 5th gen video, 2nd gen touch, 2nd gen shuffles, etc. They're good overall, but the shuffle was definitely the most open/spacious sounding of the three. And thats generally a little bland in comparison to the Sansa Clip.

Just goes to show that a totally flat frequency response and technically good sound quality doesn't tend to reflect in what you actually hear, or at least what tends to be pleasurable.

But then, at the end of the day, for most people the iPod is generally "good enough". Not everyone wants the nth degree of sound quality, and most listening environments don't justify buying a product on sound quality alone.

Creative Zen is supposed to be good as for audio quality, I do not know, I haven't tried one myself. So going to ipods could be a step back. Maybe not a dealbreaker for the OP, but it should be mentioned, I think.

They were supposed to be good, but the one I had (Zen Microphoto) was absolutely terrible on sound - by far and away the worst I'd ever had in an MP3 player.

But I've had friends/colleagues with other Zen models, and they'e apparently been fine.

I've got a Creative Zen (just Zen!) and have been hapily enjoying away for the last couple of years My partner and I have had 4 Creative MP3 players between us now (though not the Microphoto one!), and I've been impressed with the sound quality on all of them. My Zen Touch was great until a fellow commuter spilled coffee over it and had lasted me 3 years up until that point.
My Zen has 32gb of memory (can be used for photos and videos as well as music) and has a memory card slot so can be effectively doubled in size (in case your 20gb music collection grows!). This doesn't, however, integrate with the main player, so if you selected 'random play all' then it would only play from the player, not the card. Not sure if this has been changed with the more recent models, but I don't plan on upgrading til this one breaks... It has a decent battery life - I charge it every couple of days but use it for 8-10 hours a day due to an insanely boring job, though obviously if you're watching vids on ther it won't last as long.
Newer models have WiFi and suchlike but as a result, the )just) Zen can be picked up for considerably less than it was when I got it (the Creative site has the 32gb for £120)!

I got my Creative Zen MX (16GB) about 2 years ago and thinking about upgrading now too. Overall I think it has great sound quality but it also depends on the quality of the earphones you use. The earphones that came with it were actually not bad, crisp bass, distinguishable treble and dynamic sound but when they broke I went through about 4 or 5 different pairs of standard earphones and you can REALLY tell the difference. Basic pair of Sony earphones, no depth of bass, no sense of dimension, just sound fused together. Settled with a pair of Sennheiser CX 300, not as good as the standard issue Zen earphones (though 4 times as dear) but much better than what I've been using.

I'm thinking of staying with Zen but upgrading to Zen X-Fi 32GB and EP-830 earphones.

As for the Zen Microphoto, never heard of that model nor can I see it on their website but after googling it, it looks like they were on some kind of i-pod inspired venture with that contraption.

I'd recommend you go with a Zen X-Fi 32GB with expandable memory. It's not top of the range like Zune but it's higher middle end and certainly a step up from i-pod which is awful.

Just ordered a Zen X-Fi II which supports lossless audio, will let you know how it sounds when I get it. I can finally play all those FLAC files I've downloaded from Guitars101 without having to convert them to lossy MP3.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-Sans.../dp/B002NX0ME6

the sansa clip mp3 players are highly rated. this model has 8gb internal memory but then you add a micro sdhc card and you can increase the memory yourself. so add a 16gb micro sdhc card and you have 24gb, enough to store your music. in time the 32gb sdhc cards will come down in price and you can upgrade to one of those

the sansa clip can also play other file formats such as flac and the sound quality is supposed to be good

you might get it at a better price, and there are other models, just make sure you get one that has the sdhc slot as other models don't have it. you can get a 2gb model a lot cheaper

alternately if you don't mind second hand, checkout places like cash convertors for an ipod classic. it's hard drive based so you get more storage for your money over flash based players. the downside is you have to use itunes