I can’t go full “dumb phone” for a number of reasons, but I am intrested in getting an MP3 to reduce my phone useage. Most likely an iPod if I can find one, and most likely to be ordered online.
However, I don’t know how to judge a good listing for these devices, nor am I capable of reparing one myself. What are some red flags to look out for when buying one? What are some green flags? Any other tips for finding a good listing?
i used to have different mp3 players and ipods as they came out, and i remember three things being most important to me:
the original ipod was a bit too thick for my pockets back then, so i ended up using a cylinder-style mp3 player. it was much easier to upload music as well since it was just a drag and drop transfer into the OS’ file explorer. itunes is a huge pain.
if you go retro tech, i personally really liked the 2nd generation ipod nano. but i think maybe going for a new well-reviewed usb-c charged mp3 player might be the way to go. sony still makes walkmans. i hope this kinda gives you an idea what to look out for! 
seconding this! last year i wanted to add some new music to an old iPod i had laying around, but my experience with itunes was such a nightmare that i gave up after spending a whole weekend on it.
it may be worth your time to download itunes and organize some of your music library there to try it out, before purchasing new hardware and committing to the ipod/itunes ecosystem. maybe you can tolerate it better than i can, or maybe you’ll even like it!
I didn’t know they still made these! Yeah, I should go w/ usbc, I have no other chargers :P I’ll look into these!
Yeah I think I’ll do that. A part of me really wants some older tech if I can get it, but new would be better for me in a lot of ways… Will do this to “break the tie”.
This topic has been my hyperfixation for the past month or so. I was rocking a sansa clip+ for many years until the battery wore down past the point of being usable. There are a lot of modern players out there, a lot of them, like the FiiO M11 Plus and the Astral & Kern SR35 (why is its screen lopsided, I hate it), have a touchscreen and run Android, which seemed counter to why I wanted to use an MP3 player in the first place. Not to mention these are really expensive. A modern device more aligned to what I want is the Tangara, which is less expensive, but hasn’t shipped yet.
What I ultimately decided on was an iPod classic. The 4th and 5th generations are really easy to repair with the right tools, unless you break the battery connector like I did 
. Repairability is really important to me, because at this point these devices are getting to be 20 years old, and their original batteries are going bad and started to expand, which is a really dangerous fire hazard. Even a refurbished model with a new battery will need to be replaced again in the future, even if it’s a decade from now, so being able to easily do that myself is necessary. For this reason, I would recommend against the iPod nano, because its battery is soldered onto the board, and the newer generations (the ones with the one-piece aluminum body) are almost impossible to open up without breaking.
In my opinion, the iPod has the best user experience of any MP3 player I’ve used, except for having to use iTunes, which, as xandra and loren pointed out, is terrible. There are alternative ways to use it, for example Rhythmbox and GTKpod can load music on there, or you can install 3rd party firmware Rockbox to be able to just drag and drop files in the file manager. Rockbox is pretty nice, but can be a drain on the battery if you’re using one of the flash storage upgrade boards instead of the original hard drive.
I’ve been working on a blog post detailing my experience with repairing and using an iPod classic, I can post it here once it’s done if that’s something you are interested in.
Yes please!
If I do grab a reforbished iPod, are there any “this is a scam” signs to look for when buying one?
thanks for this link! i’m gonna look into it and hopefully i’ll finally be able to revive my iPod 
I don’t know where you’re looking for your iPod so this may or may not be helpful but I’ve bought a couple of iPod 5th gen Nanos off of ebay. I just made sure the seller had a good rating and read their reviews.
I started looking at this a year ago and was about to go down a similar route to @yequari but realised that I’m not going to be able to pick up device repair as a hobby amongst every thing else going on in my life at the moment.
I settled on an already modded device from a seller on Etsy for a Bluetooth modded iPod Video 5th Generation
You can then addon things like USB-C and a couple others.
From my reading, the 5th Generation Video had the sought after Wolfson Dac for that nice audio experience.
I’ve not actually purchased it yet. But I will… Just need to save up a bit more :P