What MP3 player for my 8 year old nephew?

[proud2deviate]

Recently, I've been thinking about getting the nephew an MP3 player for christmas. Unfortunately, my own experience is limited to iriver and Apple products, so I don't really know what else might be worth a damn. The kid mentioned that he wants a Sansa Shaker, but I can tell you that it ain't gonna happen on my dime. I looked it up, and it seems to be a gimmicky piece of crap. No screen, and you shake it to randomly switch songs. Screw that.

Some requirements:

UMS capable. This is a big one. No itunes, Windows media player, DRM infected crap. I want to plug it in, drag n' drop, and be done with it. (My sister recently got an ipod nano for her birthday, and after an hour-long session of playing with itunes, my hair started falling out in clumps.)

Durable. It's for an active eight year old kid.

Flash based, internal memory. No cards to break or lose. External expansion might be okay. I'm thinking 2 gigs ought to be good.

Decent sound quality. For those times when uncle borrows it

Relatively inexpensive. I want to be mildly generous, not stupid over-extravagant. More over, I want to be able to shake it off if the thing gets lost/stolen/broken.

Any suggestions?

 

[ziptrickhead]

Creative sells old refurbished models of the touch zen for 60ish (with shipping) on their site. It fits most of your requirements except i dont know about being durable because i've only dropped it once but it stills works. It also is quite big and heavy... But its a hard price to beat for 20gb.

There is also the refurbished zen stone (35ish with shipping) thats just 1 gb. No interface though (like the ipod shuffle). But for a small child it would probably be best since compared to the zen touch it weighs almost nothing... Plus at the price its nothing to cry about if it gets lost or stolen.

Personally my brother bought me one of the refurbish zen touch and when i got it i swear it was probably just one of the units they never sold and were trying to clear out. It looked perfectly new. Really my only issue with it is that its 1.5 times bigger than my old muvo^2 and 2 times heavier. Still, it also has 4 times the hard drive space so i cant complain. That and I didn't really like the interface since i prefer the simpler interface of the muvo models.

http://us.creative.com/products/pro...&category=618&WT.cg_n=Campaigns&WT.mc_id=9126

http://us.creative.com/products/pro...&category=618&WT.cg_n=Campaigns&WT.mc_id=9128

 

[choubbi]

look at meizu M3 or M6, they seem quite good for cheap.
if you have time to spend searching for info about them, go to the forum meizume.com.

 

[jstewart16701]

I have a Creative Muvo V100 that I use at work. It's a 1 gig flash based and runs on an aaa battery. Was only about $40 at Walmart. It's drag and drop and has pretty good sound with a good pair of ear phones (the included ones suck, you may want to factor in the cost of decent headphones). I've dropped it numerous times with no ill effects.

Creative has the refurbished one's for $19.99:

http://us.creative.com/products/product.asp?product=16313

Jamie

 

[choubbi]

I have a Creative Muvo V100 that I use at work. It's a 1 gig flash based and runs on an aaa battery. Was only about $40 at Walmart.

Seems like a way better solution than mine, forget about the meizus, they're a bit less reliable than the creative DAPs, and not that much cheaper