There have been numerous music threads here lately, and I have had this lingering question for a while. As of last July, I have been mourning the death of Apple's iPod Shuffle. I am looking for a decent mp3 player that has a large capacity (at least 2-4 GB), a decent battery life and most importantly that can be operated without looking. It also has to play in random order, and remember where it stopped in a very long track (my tracks are usually about 60 minutes long). There are bonus points if it can keep track of the number of times a particular track has played, but that is not a must. I am not after the El Cheapo, 2,99 mp3 players that abound on eBay and Amazon. Those have bad battery life according to reviews. I would easily pay up to 100$ if I knew that what I'm getting is what I'm looking for.

Please note that this device would be used as a dedicated device rather than a multipurpose machine (like the iPod touch).

The Sandisk clip jam is  my favorite MP3 player, I've had mine for about a year now, its lasted through being run over by a bicycle, being smashed various times, and other bits of abuse here and there.. it has a battery life of about 18 hours, (lasts me through a full day) it has 8 gig internal memory, and an SD slot which i have plugged  a 16 gig card into, so i got about 24 gigs of memory, i have about 3900 songs stored on it, most are in OGG vorbis at 192kbs, its equivalent to a 320KBs MP3 same quality smaller size (WHY IS OGG NOT AS POPULAR!?)
also got some FLAC,MP2,WMA and M4A in there...  anyway... its an awesome little rugged player and it is my go to... JUST DONT GET IT WET! it is not water proof, but other than that, its great. cost me about 30 bucks, including the price of the SD card, the player came with a charging/transfer cable, a pair of decent earbuds. this thread was like a no brainer for me lol...

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1141414-REG/sandisk_sdmx26_008g_g46k_clip_jam_8gb_mp3.html

At some point ~10 years ago i had a generic Chinese one, the type with the male USB connector (that can be plugged directly into PC) and powered by 1 AA battery. It was mostly ok, though occasionally freezing (to a point where i would fiddle with the battery to reset it) but not too often. After few years of use it suddenly died from firmware data corruption while being plugged into a PC

At some point ~10 years ago i had a generic Chinese one, the type with the male USB connector (that can be plugged directly into PC) and powered by 1 AA battery. It was mostly ok, though occasionally freezing (to a point where i would fiddle with the battery to reset it) but not too often. After few years of use it suddenly died from firmware data corruption while being plugged into a PC

I had one of those around 10 years ago aswell, mine died of battery corrosion... did not really miss it... i had another one of the same type which came preloaded with "2009's greatest hits" it died somehow but i forgot how... had a SANSA M250  lost that at school kinda miss this one but it only had like 2GB... not enough for all the stuff i listen to... then i am here with my SANSA clipjam... so far its been the best one I've had.

So does the Sansa clip jam permit to simply pause the music for a very long time, and resume exactly where you left off (exact position within the track) ? By a very long time, I mean several days.

If I get one, I would use it in the car. It would stay there unless charging in the home. It would play when I'm driving, and be paused when I leave the car. It would spend most of its time paused. I don't really want to fiddle with turning it on/off in addition to pause/play.

So does the Sansa clip jam permit to simply pause the music for a very long time, and resume exactly where you left off (exact position within the track) ? By a very long time, I mean several days.

If I get one, I would use it in the car. It would stay there unless charging in the home. It would play when I'm driving, and be paused when I leave the car. It would spend most of its time paused. I don't really want to fiddle with turning it on/off in addition to pause/play.

Aslong as you keep power to it yes it can manage that. i've had it playing when i went to bed many times, and when i wake up in the morning, i go to unplug it and mount it to my belt, and its paused on the first track (i have loop playing off so it plays through all the tracks and stops at the last) if you unplug it once you pause it it will eventually time out, however it does keep the place you paused it at.

I think my favorite might be my iRiver iFP 700 series.  Bought it in 2005.  Only 512 MB of storage, but long play time on a single AA battery.  It was the first MP3 player I had that wasn't a total piece of crap.  Capability wise, it could play multiple formats, could shuffle or play in the order files were loaded to it, and supported folders.  Initially it used special software for managing music on it, but a later firmware update changed it to UMS.  Writing was speedy when using a USB 2 connection, but wasn't terribly slow on a 1.1 connection either, and since it used a USB A-mini B cable, having my only USB 2 ports on the back of my PC wasn't much of an inconvenience.  I was considering an iPod shuffle (1st generation) but chose the iRiver due to it's screen and ability to run from a AA battery, which was important to me at the time.  It could pause and resume as long as the battery had a charge.  Although it's plastic, it felt sturdy, and it's display was a small but high resolution back lit dot matrix LCD.  I've acquired various iPods with more capabilities over the years, and even a Zune but I think this little player still ranks as my favorite.  Drop a battery in it and it still plays like the day it was new.

Prior to that, my first MP3 player (2002) was an RCA Lyra2.  It ran on two AA batteries and used a Compact Flash card for storage, and had a 1.8" back lit display.  Supported MP3 and WMA, as well as a proprietary mp3PRO format that never caught on.  Unfortunately, it had some heavy DRM that made it a pain to use.  Music could only be loaded from a supplied custom version of either MusicMatch or RealPlayer.  The player itself didn't plug into the computer.  Instead the CF card came out, and went into an included USB (or serial) CF reader, which was quite slow.  I had a Sandisk reader, which was faster, but the software would only recognize the supplied one.  During the copy process, files were converted to an encrypted version.  The player couldn't play unencrypted files loaded directly to the CF card.  At least on my Athlon based desktop, the encryption process was fast.  I could also load music to it on my K6-2 based laptop using a PC card to Compact Flash adapter (and RealPlayer), which wrote to the cards very quickly.  However, the encryption process on that computer was painfully slow.  I couldn't win.  Using the player was fairly slow.  It had to be turned on and took several seconds to boot up.  I could than find songs to play.  However, it could only pause for up to 60 seconds, than it would shut off.  After it shuts off, it had to be booted back up, and would not resume from where it left off.  The battery life on two AAs was not very long, prompting me to invest in rechargeable batteries.  It included a 64 MB CF card.  I later invested in a 256 MB card, but the player would crash trying to play from cards that large.  Fortunately, it would work fine with 128 MB cards, so I traded cards with my camera.  It felt light weight and cheap, and the plastic would creak when pushing buttons.  It was a nifty idea, but overall a disappointment.

My second player (2003) was a Sony NetMD MiniDisc based player.  It felt a little more solid than the RCA, and had decent runtime from a single AA battery, but had many of the same problems.  Music was managed from Sony's special software, and tracks were converted from MP3 to a proprietary ATAC3 format, before writing them to the MiniDisk.  The storage on a disc was limited, but at least it was easy to swap multiple discs with it.  Its display was a small LCD display.  It could scroll media information, but could only display like 4 characters at a time.  Worked OK, but was still saddled by cludgy music management software and a slow transfer process.

Interesting thread! I'm surprised that MP3 players themselves are still even a thing, I personally haven't used MP3s (or even iTunes!)  much at all in years now, I've long since gone to streaming services like Pandora and YouTube Red, and Pandora Premium has an offline mode which allows you to still have music playing even in an area with no wi-fi or cell phone coverage (And I do go a lot of places that lack both those services, as well as terrestrial FM radio, so that's out)

I haven't seen what I will call the "AAA Battery" variety MP3 players in years in person, basically I always thought of them as the cheap, basic alternative to an iPod.  I owned an iPod touch, if that counts, as a teenager, and had MP3s on that, but even then started streaming whenever I was someplace with Wi-Fi. 

I guess I last used MP3 for music this past spring on a home computer, listening to an ITunes library I hadn't listened to in probably years, only because my Internet connection was down that day.  Granted I've had libraries with in excess of 24 hours of music/tracks before, all long gone on long gone/wiped computers.

If anything, I still listen to terrestrial FM radio quite a bit, when not on the computer, at which time I utilize streaming services.  I'm using YouTube Red as I type this. 

Re: Favorite unit, I like the idea of the old clip-on iPod shuffle, with no screen, and doesn't have to be looked at to change the volume/song/play/pause. 

I stream Spotify through my iPhone.  Like Pandora, Spotify allows you to listen to music through your account in places without wifi.  That's perfect for my purposes, since I stream music from my phone into the car stereo with a Bluetooth device.  I can't go a day without Spotify on my phone or on my laptop.

itunes is horrible! Nearly impossible to use, badly laid out, and everything is expensive.  Often, you must buy an entire album just to buy a single song.  I haven't used itunes in ages and I don't miss it one bit!

Spotify is wonderful!  Simple to use, intuitive, and a great value with a monthly fee and unlimited music    It even gives you "good" song suggestions for playlists you make yourself.