My 2nd gen 20gig iPod is about 5 years old and I’m thinking about upgrading.  But there is nothing on the market that appeals to me at this time, so I have decided to design my own.  I hope some manufacturers are listening! 

The Creative Zen is a good starting point.  The size is great at 2.7" x 1.7" x .6" and only .6 oz in weight, it’s tiny.  The screen is 1.5" diagonal, which is enough to view song information and pictures, but not really enough for movies.  That’s fine, because this will not be my movie player.  I want a flash based mp3 player.  If I want to play movies, I would have to get a hard drive based player, and that would change everything about my ideal player. 

Let’s back up a second and talk more after the break.

What is important to me is portability and size.  I will be using this unit during workouts and in my car.  I want it to be tiny, yet I want it to hold tons of music.  I will not watch movies on it because I can use my Dell Axim or laptop for that.  I don’t care for an FM tuner.  Nor do I care for the ability to record.  I have plenty of great headphones, so they needn’t bother giving me any.  I want large buttons that I can access by feel, without looking at them.  And I want a lock switch that will disable the buttons.  And, of course, I want great sound.  Lastly, someone, one day, will make a set of bluetooth headphones that actually sound good.  So for that day, I would like bluetooth capability built in.

Storage

Let’s take a closer look.  The state of the art flash player has 8 gigs built in.  So give me 8 G.  But give me an SDHC slot.  I can buy an 8 G SDHC card for $65 at Newegg.  Boom, I have 16G!

User Interface

Keep it simple.  I want big buttons that I can feel with my fingers while the unit is in my pocket during a workout.  And make sure this thing cranks!  The display doesn’t have to be fancy, but it should display Artist, song, and cd info.  Some players have touchscreens, but that would be wasted on me.  I don’t want to look at the screen, I want to feel the buttons.

Software and Music Service

Give me a choice between windows explorer and another music transfer software.  Music Match is fine, so is iTunes.  Don’t lock me into a music service, and keep it DRM free.  I may rent music, or buy.  Give me a choice.

I want fast USB 2.0 for transferring music.  And I want this player to play all the popular formats.

Battery

I want a rechargable lithion ion battery that is user replaceable.  Something small, yet powerful, that I can buy at radioshack.

Price

Players with these features should go for about $175.00.  I didn’t ask for WiFi.  I may be short-sighted, but I don’t see how WiFi would be beneficial to me.  It would just add extra cost to the player, and I’d rather just download music to my computer anyway. 

What Do You Think?

I’m ready to buy this player.  I think it’s realistic.  I think people would buy it.  Would you?  What would you change?  How would you design your ultimate mp3 player?

Edit: the Zen V Plus is now available in the US for $250 and comes with a 16G flash drive.  Read about it here.

[tags]mp3, player, bluetooth, wifi, jamm, just another mobile monday[/tags]