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Comment by blondin | Hacker News Reader

zune was the most underestimated mp3 player ever. it just never got the fame it deserved.

Agreed. I still use my original Zune every day. It's off the grid now, the Zune software still works but can't connect to any MS servers, has an FM radio. They can be picked up very cheap.

I have a Zune 120 and Zune HD as well but I don't find them either as good, especially on FM radio.

Which model do you have? I think I'm going to grab one.

I have each generation they made. I personally like the 1st gen Zune 30 since I listen to a lot of KEXP and it has the best performing radio, but I'd suggest looking at the models and figuring out what you need. None of them are bad in my opinion.

Do you have a recommendation if I just want to play MP3s through my car aux? Don't really care about size as long as it's at least 2 GB.

Every time I look for something, it seems like there's only $20 junk and $100+ players to choose from. I've gone through 3 Sansa Clips that just keep dying. I bought a Fiio x1 and had the wheel die on me in the first year, and using the warranty was way too much hassle.

Zune 80/120 or Zune HD. You can usually find people practically giving them away on Craigslist, Offerup, etc. Zune 120 has a disk drive in it if you're concerned about that. Zune HD comes in 16GB, 32GB, and a rare 64GB and includes HD radio.

Not a Zune, but consider a Blackberry 9900 - there are some on eBay for around $40 [1], they take micro SD expandable storage, appear as USB drives so they don't need sync software, have a standard headphone socket, have wifi and bluetooth and touchscreen as well as physical keyboard, and the hardware and build quality is "high end business device from ~2011".

Software is nothing special, but shuffle play artist/album/song/playlist it can do.

[1] e.g. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Mint-Used-BlackBerry-Bold-9900-Unlo...

Agreed, this was my phone for years and the speed of opening the music app and typing to filter down to what you want is fantastic. Easily swappable battery too.

The Zune was too late. It was launched 6 months before the iPhone was announced. The MP3 player market peaked shortly after as iPhone and Android took off. It's hard to launch a new product into a shrinking market.

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