Sandisk mp3 players are discontinued

[Frank Cox]

I was just checking Amazon for mp3 players and didn't see any Sandisk brand on there.

So I found this: https://support-en.sandisk.com/app/a...end-of-support

Looks like Sandisk is no more when it comes to mp3 players.

What's left seems to be $10-$40 no-brand Chinese players, and $200-to-$800 really expensive mp3 players with nothing (that I can see at the moment) in the way of reasonable price with a reasonable chance of getting something of good quality.

[Ryan Gallagher]

There is a huge community of folks dedicated to keeping classic iPods alive... battery swap guides etc etc. Maybe the best choice is actually vintage at this point.

Or just use an old phone? Or a laptop (if not needing portable). Ebay if you are really a fan of a discontinued model?

[Jim Cassedy]

<edited> Or just use an old phone?

Exactly what I was going to suggest also.
One venue I worked still had an early i-pod they were using for intermission music. I got
tired of dealing I-Tunes, etc. I finally switched to using an old Android phone on which
I removed all the unnecessary apps & files, etc. It worked great, and I was still able
to easily connect via wi-fi and easily transfer music files from the net or their desktop
computer. I still occasionally use it, and another old android phone for walk-in music.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I guess it's hard to compete against every phone nowadays also being "an MP3 player". You still have brands like Sony producing high-end portable media players, but I guess they only cater to a niche market.

I'd say, take a Raspberry Pi and put an MP3 player on it... There are even dedicated Linux distributions for this.

There is stuff on e.g. HiFiBerry, to turn your single RasPi into an 8-channel multi-room streamer.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Yeah to my knowledge the only players that will remain in production are overpriced ones dedicated to services offering special "audiophile" formats. And now that even Spotify is rolling out "lossless" streaming, their days may be numbered as well. Apple has had their own lossless for a while too. The quotes are intentional, cause how lossless or bit perfect they actually are highly depends on the OS/software/drivers/hardware on the player end it seems.