>A friend asked if I knew of an MP3 player that would be good for a two-week hike with no access to electricity, and it really seems like there's nothing out there beyond carrying around a bunch of batteries.
Go on the used market and look for old iRiver players if you can, preferably the T10. They take AA batteries and last forever (45+ hours), have a rugged sporty design and had the best non-Apple quality and UX.
The only downside is the small flash storage on them for today's standards but only the old players were feature AA batteries, before they all switched to sealed internal lithium meaning they are now dead.
But on the upside the name brand players from 20 years ago had higher quality MP3 decoding SoCs and audio DACs, while the new MP3 players with AA batteries you can buy today are all bottom of the barrel chinesium e-waste.
Go on the used market and look for old iRiver players if you can, preferably the T10. They take AA batteries and last forever (45+ hours), have a rugged sporty design and had the best non-Apple quality and UX.
The only downside is the small flash storage on them for today's standards but only the old players were feature AA batteries, before they all switched to sealed internal lithium meaning they are now dead.
But on the upside the name brand players from 20 years ago had higher quality MP3 decoding SoCs and audio DACs, while the new MP3 players with AA batteries you can buy today are all bottom of the barrel chinesium e-waste.