Why are all the MP3 players horribly rated?

[Joduko]

I use an MP3 player at work so that I don't have to use my phone's battery and so I can just use a 3.5 jack for my music and still have my phone in my pocket while at work.
I've had my current MP3 player for just over a year and the battery has begun bulging out 2 weeks ago and the glue holding the top portion of the screen has failed with the battery bulging against it pushing it out.

I'm on Amazon looking for another sub 25 USD mp3 player and I'm finding that even the expensive ones all seem to manage atleast 10+% 1 star reviews. Like, it's just a music player, not a smart phone. How do you mess up something so...simple?

[Middcore]

I mean, are there common recurring complaints in the negative reviews? 

 

My surmise would be that since most people have moved on from dedicated MP3 players and just listen to music on their phones (not a criticism of your use case just stating a fact), only no-name, corner-cutting companies with no QC are in the market. I mean, of the first page of results on Amazon, the only brand  I've ever heard of here in any capacity is SanDisk, and half the other results are attempts to ape the look of the 4th-gen iPod Nano, many of them clearly the exact same product being sold under multiple different names. 

[Jorgemeister]

Audiophiles can be very picky, and that price range doesnt seem promising.

 

Ive been using my Fiio DAP for a few years now and dont have any complain, their products seems well rated in Amazon.

[SpookyCitrus]

30 minutes ago, Joduko said:

I'm on Amazon looking for another sub 25 USD mp3 player 

I mean, with that budget. Arcade machine prize quality is really the only option. Quality MP3 players are few and far between and much more money. There isn't really a market for them with cell phones and spotify being a thing so that's a major reason why. Honestly investing in a battery bank that can charge up your phone would be more worth it than buying a dinky little MP3 player. Otherwise spend the money to get an actual quality MP3 player. It's almost like you get what you pay for?

[Sarra]

Why would any company invest any money to make a product that will never compete with smartphones? The BOM isn't that big, but the R&D, plus software support, customer support, etc., just makes it prohibitively expensive to make a quality MP3 player.

 

Get some earbuds for your phone. I have a Z Fold 3, a notorious power hog, and with BT on all day, I still end up with more than 50% battery at the end of the day.

[Psittac]

That budget is going to be difficult, but there are MANY excellent DAP's or Digital Audio Players

 

A quick amazon search shows this one with great reviews for an increase in budget

[dizmo]

I was confused by this, and then I saw your budget. Fam. $25. What are you thinking. Of course most of the MP3 players in that price range are going to get bad reviews. You can increase your budget a little and find units actually worth paying money for. Ones that won't die on you. You do, after all, get what you pay for.

 

With a budget like that, I really can't think of anything but the Sansa Clip. It comes in various forms. If you up the budget to $75 - $100 you get far better units.

 

What you need to understand is it's not "simple." There's a lot that goes into making a decent DAP, and when it's done poorly, you get poor reviews.

 

On 7/13/2022 at 2:23 PM, Middcore said:

I mean, are there common recurring complaints in the negative reviews? 

 

My surmise would be that since most people have moved on from dedicated MP3 players and just listen to music on their phones (not a criticism of your use case just stating a fact), only no-name, corner-cutting companies with no QC are in the market. I mean, of the first page of results on Amazon, the only brand  I've ever heard of here in any capacity is SanDisk, and half the other results are attempts to ape the look of the 4th-gen iPod Nano, many of them clearly the exact same product being sold under multiple different names. 

There's loads of DAPs out there, a lot from very big name companies (Sony, for example), and tons of smaller players (Cowon, Fiio, Shanling, HiBy, Astell&Kern, etc).

On 7/13/2022 at 2:35 PM, Jorgemeister said:

Audiophiles can be very picky, and that price range doesnt seem promising.

 

Ive been using my Fiio DAP for a few years now and dont have any complain, their products seems well rated in Amazon.

Fiio makes solid DAPs, though they no longer make anything under $500. The used market has tons of offerings though, and they're all quite affordable.

On 7/13/2022 at 6:08 PM, Sarra said:

Why would any company invest any money to make a product that will never compete with smartphones? The BOM isn't that big, but the R&D, plus software support, customer support, etc., just makes it prohibitively expensive to make a quality MP3 player.

 

Get some earbuds for your phone. I have a Z Fold 3, a notorious power hog, and with BT on all day, I still end up with more than 50% battery at the end of the day.

Never compete isn't true, and there's lots of quality units out there, but definitely not anything in the OPs budget.

[8tg]

On 7/13/2022 at 8:08 PM, Sarra said:

Why would any company invest any money to make a product that will never compete with smartphones? The BOM isn't that big, but the R&D, plus software support, customer support, etc., just makes it prohibitively expensive to make a quality MP3 player.

The market who’s actually buying dedicated players these days aren’t buying cheap devices that just play MP3’s.

The majority of people interested in a dap are buying one because it does way more than any phone can do from an audio standpoint, balanced outputs, high end dacs, massive file support, music specific ui features, physical buttons for music control, etc.

Even on the low end:

Walkman NW A55, a sub 200$ player new. This gets 20-30 hours of active use battery life, has physical media buttons, and can play up to DSD256. No phone on the market can compare in the music playing capabilities something like this even on the low end can do.

 

But this is also why op is finding terrible options, that market is dead, the $25 MP3 player market was always terrible (iPods in their day were 2-300$ machines). But now those exist as basically ewaste. This is the new low end, NW A55, Hiby R3, AP80, Fiio M3, etc, all of which are above 120$ at minimum, that’s the point where you start finding actual serious devices for this use case.

[Imbadatnames]

Just buy a used iPod and replace the battery 

[cmndr]

These will be the main reasons why the cheapest of mp3 players will be rated poorly

1. It's hard to do an OK job at a VERY low price
2. Audiophiles can be picky.

Realistically the best ultra-cheap choices are going to be
Sansa Clip, Sansa Fuze, MAYBE an ipod nano

 

You might want to look for something used to hit your price point or close to.