My ~7 year old Sansa Clip+ is still going. Soon after buying it, I was fed up with it scanning everything when I turned it on. When I loaded Rockbox on it, and it was able to reliably go from off to playing music in 2 seconds, I knew it was a keeper! (That's a killer app right there!) I use it just about every day when commuting. I bought another one for my dad about 3 years ago, but he doesn't use it, so I intend to ask for it after mine dies. (Who knows how long that will be. These things are built like old Nokia phones.)

You must be lucky and/or careful. I've gone through a bunch, and aside from losing them, it's always the headphone jack input that goes. Apparently this was common enough there were soldering how-to videos out there.

One of the things I valued most is being able to navigate the device without looking at it - not possible with the move to touchscreen interfaces most things have moved to.

I loved my Sansa e200 and installed Rockbox. Just pulled it out of a drawer and remembered what a great piece of hardware it was - hadn't been used in years and the battery still had a charge. The hardware wheel selector is a lost piece of tech that needs to be recovered, perhaps for use in car stereos and TV remotes. Rockbox was a great idea, well executed. However I'm baffled why it's still seeing so much recent activity considering how few MP3 players are still in use.

I still have a Clip+/Rockbox that I load up with meditation tracks. I don't feel as bad falling asleep with this thing clipped to me as I would my phone.

I just picked up another Sansa Clip Zip, I tend to lose them or have them stolen, on the last one the buttons wore out due to playing Rockblox too much! Still my favorite media player with Rockbox.

I had done an early port of NSF, SPC, and ADX players back when I had an iPod Photo, though I think the NSF one was redone since. I also did some work on a text-only wikipedia viewer that was fun to have, though never really shippable: https://www.rockbox.org/tracker/task/4755

Haha, according to Amazon, I went through 10 clips in the last 10 years. They were the perfect music player for the gym or anywhere else you didn't want to use a bulky and far more expensive phone.

That being said, about 3-4 years ago the quality really began to decline on the Clip models - not sure if they just changed their manufacturing place or what, but a lot of us fans were disappointed.

There really are no good options anymore for a standalone small MP3 player. You've got bulky Iphones and Android, expensive IPads (the Shuffle was a good option 'till it was discontinued) and dozens off terrible Chinese knockoffs with poor battery and software*. I also miss the days when there were a dozen major companies competing in the portable music space.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=mp3+player&ref=nb_sb_noss_2

There actually are still quite a few companies making mp3 players, but they call them Digital Audio Players (DAPs) and market them to the audio enthusiast crowd. The do cost a lot more than the Sansa Clips did, but you get better audio quality. Look up Fiio, Shanling, Cowon, and Sony DAPs on Amazon if you want some examples.

Does Rockbox work on any of these though?

a bit dated, but:

http://xvtx.ru/rockbox/

Looks like at least some of this code was eventually upstreamed.

Yeah I picked up three of them at a Radio Shack that was clearing them out, all gone now. Most of the value of those would be in the 32 or 64GB microSD card I'd put in them! Most recent one is a refurb off eBay, but the battery is pretty poor.

https://www.newpower99.com/ has replacement batteries for a lot of Sansa players.

Judging from all the comments, the Sansa Clip+ was a popular option. I used to have one to and loved it, but eventually my use of a standalone mp3 players faded when I had a phone on me at all times and the last time I pulled it out of a drawer, I couldn't get the thing to hold a charge and it didn't seem worth the trouble to see if replacement batteries for it were even a thing.

Yes - I have Rockbox running on a Sansa Clip+ and it's superb. The only music player apart from Winamp that has a built-in out-of-phase stereo option! (aka 'vocal remover', though the effect is highly variable)

I have a similar story, it really worked well. Nowadays it's hard to compete with services like Spotify, it's got basically all the music I care for accessible instantly.

But I suppose that if music streaming follows in the footsteps of TV show/movie streaming where you have to subscribe to half a dozen services to get access to most of the content I'll have to dust off my old Rockbox player and bittorent client. Hopefully it won't come to that.

I used to do this as well. I realised this weekend my mom still does after I set it up for her. Those things turn out to be nearly indistructible.

I still do exactly that. Best portable music player :).

I had the same setup with a second hand Fuze I found on ebay. Awesome!