my experience using an mp3 player for like a month
one day in around september of 2024, my youtube feed got swarmed with a bunch of digital minimalism videos. videos concerning ways to not rely on our cell phones for everything and using devices more purposefully, stuff like that.
i learned lots from these videos. one recurring topic of these was the revival of the humble mp3 player (or otherwise known as the dap/digital audio player). a little doohickey that has all your music files (plus other audio stuff like podcasts and books). i got really into the idea, not exactly sure why. i am a big fan of specialized devices and i like music (like any other human being). so why not give one a shot...?
it was around this time when i was watching all these videos that i was actually gathering up all my music files from spotify to move elsewhere. i was also growing tired of the subscription model and how spotify lacked many tracks/albums/artists that i liked (namely in the video game space), and managing local file uploads across my devices was just kinda annoying and messy idk. plus, i've had plenty experience witnessing some songs on my playlists disappear because of license expiration, so getting everything as a backup just seemed like The Thing To Do.
after i downloaded both my long spotify playlists (using a little something or other from the piracy subreddit...) and downloading many video game albums/music rips, i ended up hearing about musicbee and reeeaaally fell in love with it as my means to listen to all my music on my laptop. love the customization and the themes, they're so fun!!
if you ever wanna back up your music files from spotify or whatever streaming service and give musicbee a shot, i highly highly recommend :->
of course i still wanted to have all this newly download-and-mine-forever music on the go, and that's where the temptation to get an actual portable music player became its greatest. however, i was hesitant in purchasing one, beyond the concept being a big leap in what i'm used to when it comes to music-on-the-go.
- many listings for affordable players had mixed reviews. probably due to their price!
- many affordable listings also had some questionable features, like the lack of physical volume buttons or physical buttons entirely
- some players that might have looked convincing just didn't have enough information or reviews on them to make a confident purchase
- probably the most reliably Good players were out of budget for something i was only mildly interested in
i thought the perfect unicorn mp3 player that suited all my needs/preferences just didn't exist. the closest that i thought would meet my vision was the OG ipod classic but modded with modern features like usbc, bluetooth, and a different ui, but modding one myself was out of the question and also a lot of pre-built ones were very expensive!
(my family still has the old ipod classic, funnily enough. i did end up checking it out during my MP3-Pill era. the batteries are totally fried obviously but i thought for a brief, brief moment how cool it would be if apple brought them back to cater to a niche crowd. but then i remembered that modern apple would Modern Apple all over it and make it suck so nvm 🥲)
after a lot of back-and-forth throughout october and the first half of november, i had finally decided to just go for it after having received some amazon gift money -- the innioasis y1
i will not go into excruciating detail about the level of obsessive i got with analyzing this thing before purchase, checking every single review and cross referencing it with youtube video reviews. no, that's all behind me now.
around thanksgiving, i got this thing, and i've been using it fairly consistently for about a month or two. here are my thoughts
the pros
- sorry i am still just so tickled at the idea of having a dedicated device for music separate from my phone. i just think it's neat.
- the form is a teensy bit small and lightweight, but it fits wonderfully in a pocket
- this was the only player i looked at that actually imitates the ipod classic's click wheel. it's not quite the same and definitely feels more flimsy than the original, but having this in the modern era is very cool and novel
- sound quality is not too bad, even with the built-in speaker. not an audiophile tho... i just use mp3s
- the display is functional for the most part. there are some cases where albums that i know have album art don't have them displayed when played, though maybe that was my fault with how i added said album art. the album art gets cropped but kind of a nitpick i don't care that much about. it used to be much worse at displaying album art and cropping it even more in a previous firmware version (this was one of the things i was obsessively double checking before buying)
- the battery life is quite good! there was one time i accidentally left it running for the whole night and it only used about half of its battery. i don't have to worry about plugging it in after every use, i can just grab it and go without worrying about any issues (which i can't say about my phone which is always bleeding battery + the wireless headphones can sometimes be dead without me realizing it)
- listening on the go with wired headphones again feels sooooo nice. i hate the dongle attachment for iphones to make aux cables compatible since it's a flimsy waste of plastic (i had one and wore it out fairly quickly), and similarly wired earbuds with a lightning cable are incompatible trash (never had one of them). i don't mind my airpods (they're actually pretty great for exercise) but they die pretty easily without me realizing or there are connectivity errors. the wires can get tangled of course but they are very no-nonsense, which i appreciate
the cons
oh dear
- there are times when the music skips when it loads up. would definitely drive someone insane
- the full song/album/search function are busted bc the navigation loads the album art for everything--so if you scroll through it fast, it instantly crashes and the ui goes black until you go back to the main menu. the machine can shake it off and it's not fatal but incredibly inconvenient and shitty design. i have found a work-around to avoid this, but still this is. kinda insane
- the tracks by default, even in albums, are ordered alphabetically. so fuck you if you wanted to listen to an album in order. i think there is an option to order based on song title, and if the file name has it numbered, then that's fine, but yikes. with how broken the album view is, i've opted to using the folders option (which is where you access the internal folders of the device without the auto-organization of the music menus) where you can order stuff as you wish and have it display file names. i use this view to listen to albums in order; for playlists, i use the dedicated playlist feature, which mercifully does not load all the album art in the navigation, which allows the option to display the clean song names based on their metadata (and i build the playlists on my computer when the device is connected, then i select all songs on the folder which is thankfully a thing you can do and add them to a playlist).
- the ui is kind of a nightmare--a nesting doll of submenus type of nightmare. shuffling is a thing that is toggled in the settings menu--so if i feel like not listening to random songs and instead an actual album in its intended order, i'd have to back out of the music menu, go to settings, turn on shuffle, then go to the music menu, select "folders", then "music" (which is the sub folder that the device uses to organize music files), and then pick my folder with the album. :PPP
- i wish shuffle was a thing you could toggle in the now-playing screen by default, would be much more convenient. alas
- the shuffle is a little rudimentary and i think uses true randomness, meaning you might hear the exact song again or shortly after already hearing it when shuffling. this is especially egregious with short playlists/albums, where the chance of repetition is sky-high.
- key lock is another setting. on a classic ipod it was a physical switch that toggled whether the click wheel would respond to touch even when turned off, letting you skip tracks or pause without turning it on. turning off keylock to do this for my innioasis was fun but because it's a setting that i don't wanna backtrack a bunch of times to turn off when i feel like, there is a chance where a button could get clicked without my realizing it and have the battery wasting away for a while (the battery is durable, but still annoying). i ended up turning keylock back on, and turning the device on/off to skip or turn up volume isn't the worst, but still, i wish there was at least a physical toggle for that if they wanted to copy the ipod's functionality so much
- volume adjustment is only done on the now-playing screen. so if you back out to pick another song, there's no way to really go back there?? unless you pick a new song/restart the current one. or unless you exit the music menu and pick the "now playing" option from the main menu (ui woes 🫠). but now you are taken away from your music list!
so uh you might be wondering why i have it if i have so much to complain about.
well idk, i think the novelty + the ability to use wired headphones is just nice. i would sound positively insane recommending it to someone normal, and with how jank it can be to use, plus the extra background labor involved with obtaining your music library (if not already downloaded) and putting it on the device would be repelling to the laymen.
but i'm crayayayzay. my skin has hardened to all its bugs and precarious ui issues. i think it's holding me hostage. whateves
i think it's pretty great for traveling, like long road trips or train rides. cuz you're stationary, so you have all the time to scroll through your song list or through the submenus. and its nice battery life + lack of need for wireless headphones means you can listen to something for a very very long time.
i was on a road trip from washington dc to the coast of delaware for new years when i had this thing on my person. the ride was about 3 hours give or take? if i used my phone and airpods, my phone's battery would be fairly degraded and my airpods would have died about 2 hours in. but luckily my dinky inni held through without much drama (besides the occasional audio skips 🥲).
in general, now that i don't need to rely on my phone for music, and therefore don't have to take it and all of its bullshit with me everywhere (such as when i'm just going to the store or to the library to do some schoolwork), it has helped with sparing its gradually decaying battery. i think my phone's current battery capacity is like, 78% now--bound to get lower and lower (though when its time comes, i hope to keep replacing my battery til i'm dead--hate the new iphones and my current one is like the last of its kind in the size that i like). so the less i can use it for stuff that it can do, like music, the better.
i think an mp3 player can have its use for people, people dedicated enough to download their music library to put elsewhere or at least for preservation, but the innioasis y1 is just not quite there yet in terms of General Quality of Life to recommend to others. i hope that another mp3 player that mimics the ipod's click wheel, or one that's budget friendly with good features, comes along that'll rock people's socks off. idk, hopefully.
that's aaaaall~