The ogg wasteland

Samsung YP-U2

Mark‘s linked to David Pashley’s ogg player roundup. For what it’s worth, I’ve been looking into this recently too, except I had some additional restrictions which, given the players David puts on show, leaves me with only one choice (which was the one I’d previously selected in my own research): the Samsung YP-U2 (1GB for £61 or 2GB for, er, £58).

My additional restrictions were:

  • rechargeable internal battery
  • must not need cable to connect to PC

The player I’d be replacing is the Creative Zen Nano Plus 1GB which I’d give three stars for general alright-ness.

Whether I can actually justify spending ~£60 on a new player which will only give me a minor playing upgrade (only a few tens of tracks in my 20GB compressed-format music collection are in ogg) and some usability benefits (no more lugging a mini-USB cable and spare batteries around) is yet to be seen.

In fact, looking back, I’ve been wanting this player since June 2006. This is reasonably depressing – does this really mean there have been no new decent ogg-capable players for at least eight months?