Discussion: Mp3 player for exercise

Any recommendations? The iPod shuffle would be great if it could stand up to a little sweat. I've had two, but reluctant to throw more money at them.

iPod shuffle died on me as well after about 4-5 month of usage during exercising. Luckily I did not spend any money on it since I won as door-prize at local computer conference. Regardless I thought it should have been more sweat-proof.

Then I used Series Walkman MP3 Player for a year or so and it worked good while it worked. By technical specs it was supposed to handle sweat and probably did however I abused it quite a bit by taking to hot-tub, sauna, pool at local Y. It's not waterproof so I did not try diving in the pool but I'd take on leisurely swims where I kept my head above the water.

Downside of this model - it was noisy in sense that if I used it at sauna then everyone at sauna could hear what I was listening to.

Now I have been using E Series Walkman Video MP3 for about 4-5 month. So far so good but I am not sure if it is a good buy yet - it has to last more then 12 month at least, more then 24 month preferably, and more then 36 month ideally for me to call it a good buy. One of the main reasons I opted for this model was that it has FM radio option.

Downside of this model for me are control buttons and how easily is to turn it on without realizing that it's on and occasionally I have drained batteries overnight. Regarding control buttons there have been situations that instead of forwarding to next song I somehow managed to change playlist option to play just one song at the time requiring me to manually forward to next song after one finishes. I have learned to be more careful since and it has not happened in probably over 2 month now.

Sweet. Thanks!

If you're looking for something small like the iPod shuffle, I'm using this one for while already:
http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Sansa-Clip-Player-Bl...
Small, easy to use; a lot more flexible than an iPod shuffle because of the display(but still as small), you can just shuffle through everything or play selected songs or albums. The clip is good quality and easily holds for example on my running pants, no problem where to put it in summer if you (like me) don't like arm sleeves. It survived quite a lot of bad handling, throwing around, etc. - can't say much about sweat resistancy, cause I don't sweat so much...
Only thing that I changed after a while was the earphone that was shipped with it.

I had a Creative Zen that was awesome. Small and thin, fit in my little running pants pocket. I had it for about 5 years and used it pretty much every day. It survived many fall and sweaty runs! A connection finally came loose (I think). Price is right too; mine was $100.

I had a Creative MuVo, paid about $35 for it. It was severely mistreated and a button stopped working after 3 years.

Second the endorsement for the Sansa. I take it everywhere; it's quite durable and the battery life is rated at 15 hours so you don't have to charge it every day.
One of the Amazon commenters pointed out that the USB and microSD connections are not covered, so they could let in dirt or water. I haven't had any problems with that.

Thanks everyone. I'll take a good look at these.

I had one Sansa breakdown in the last 3 years. I was training for an ultra run b4 I discovered ar earlier this year so I log quite a few miles of use on my mp3 players.

I've used an IPOD Nano for about year 3, and have had no issues. I find Griffin makes the best cases, and I use a case similar to this (http://store.griffintechnology.com/ipod/ipod-nano/...). Key is that there is something over the wheel, because the touch screen has issues with sweaty fingers.

I should add that before I bought E Series Walkman Video MP3 I did consider SanDisk Sansa Fuze as well. Both MP3 players have almost identical features. It was close call but at the end I opted for Sony somewhat out of curiosity. I bought Sansa Fuze for my wife about 3 years ago and I thought I should get different brand just to compare them side by side. I did not do detailed comparison between two MP3 players but overall they have exactly the same functionality, buttons are slightly different and user interfaces are slightly different.

As pure MP3 player I felt that Sansa Fuze is more fun then E Sony Walkman. However one disadvantage what I saw in Sansa Fuze and as far as protecting it from sweat were casings that need to be used with Sansa Fuze. Volume up/down button for Sansa Fuze is disk in front of MP3 player that needs to be accessed without any covering, otherwise you won't be able to turn volume up/down. Because of that Sansa Fuze casing exposes MP3 player not just to sweat but I'd be even concerned to run with it in the rain. Casing used with E Sony Walkman fully envelopes MP3 player with just one small whole to plug earphones.

There are fully waterproof MP3 players available that are targeted for swimmers. I just googled them and I noticed prices have gone down for them. Price-tag was one of the reasons I opted for "water-resistant" vs "waterproof" when I made my latest purchase. I figured that for price of one waterproof MP3 player I could get 2 water-resistant MP3 players.

The Fuze looks cool.

But, I took the plunge... got the old school Sansa, and am right now importing my iTunes playlist.

We'll see. It looks good, but the form factor of the Shuffle is nice. The durability is not...

I used an I-pod shuffle for years (because I liked the clip) but when this broke suddenly for no noteable reason I decided to try out the Sansa Clip. I notice it's well recommended above, but I'm not too impressed by it.
Sound quality isn't great and battery life is worse it has switched off on me mid-run several times. Radio is generally useless too.

It's grand for the price, but I felt it was praised a bit too highly above. Just to let you know the cons with the pros!

I've never had battery issues with the sansa clip, and I hardly ever charge it. Strange. Didn't find the user interface to be super-awesome, but it works once you figure it out.

My trouble is that if I don't wait for the battery to run out completely before charging, then the computer actually drains the rest of the battery instead of chargin it to full.
Once I realised this it hasn't caused so many problems....