I found an old ipod 6th gen at a thrift store. Threw linux on it, and its such an easy device to work with.
They are amazing indeed, I just avoid them because everything from finding an used one to parts is 10x the price in my country, so I’d end up settling for a beat up unit with a bad battery and no real funds to upgrade it. But where this is not the case, they feel great in the hand and just work.
What kind of mp3 player did you get?
The first one I bought was an Innioasis Y1 - an iPod Classic clone. Super thin, USB-C, a simple OS that can be changed for Rockbox if you so desire, and a functional click wheel. Sounded good, synced just fine with the computer, and was nice and compact. But the screen is very very fragile, changing the SD card requires opening the unit and it never closes the same again, and behind the scenes it’s just a simple Mediatek Android phone without a modem. Tip for anybody buying this one: there’s a very hard to remove screen protector that makes the screen look very grainy… do NOT remove it even if you’re tempted to, the plastic behind the protector is the softest plastic I’ve ever seen and it will scratch if you look at it wrong.
I then tried the Snowsky Echo Mini, which has no click wheel so navigation is harder, but uses an even simpler and directly to the point OS, easy to swap microSD, super nice retro design, a leather case, and two very high quality DACs with both regular and balanced output. Sounds really good, on both headphones and speakers, so I kept this one and it’s my current daily driver.
They are amazing indeed, I just avoid them because everything from finding an used one to parts is 10x the price in my country, so I’d end up settling for a beat up unit with a bad battery and no real funds to upgrade it. But where this is not the case, they feel great in the hand and just work.
The first one I bought was an Innioasis Y1 - an iPod Classic clone. Super thin, USB-C, a simple OS that can be changed for Rockbox if you so desire, and a functional click wheel. Sounded good, synced just fine with the computer, and was nice and compact. But the screen is very very fragile, changing the SD card requires opening the unit and it never closes the same again, and behind the scenes it’s just a simple Mediatek Android phone without a modem. Tip for anybody buying this one: there’s a very hard to remove screen protector that makes the screen look very grainy… do NOT remove it even if you’re tempted to, the plastic behind the protector is the softest plastic I’ve ever seen and it will scratch if you look at it wrong.
I then tried the Snowsky Echo Mini, which has no click wheel so navigation is harder, but uses an even simpler and directly to the point OS, easy to swap microSD, super nice retro design, a leather case, and two very high quality DACs with both regular and balanced output. Sounds really good, on both headphones and speakers, so I kept this one and it’s my current daily driver.