Bonnie is participating in a charity secret Santa at her work, It's pretty swinging, actually. Each employee gets to expense $100 for gifts for some disadvantaged kid. Bonnie's kid is a 13 year old girl. She wants some typical "girl stuff" and an MP3 player.

So, we need a circa $50 MP3 player.

A quick perusal of Amazon suggests the Sandisk Sansa. But I have no idea what features are valued by the typical 13 year old girl. I do notice that the Sansa doesn't appear to support AAC. Is that a big problem? Do kids buy music from iTunes? Is 8 GB big enough? Would 4 be enough? (4 GB Sansas come in cool colors. The 8 GB one seems to be only in Model-T Ford black.) What about the FM radio feature? Do kids care about that today? Does anybody? I assume that a kids could care less about a Micro SD expansion slot.

On Amazon, there seems to be Sansas and totally no-name Chinese models at this price point. Is there another brand we should look at? Didn't iRiver make a bunch of players in this price range at one time?

http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Sansa-Clip-Player-Black/dp/B002MAPS6W/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1416622797&sr=8-5&keywords=mp3+player

Paging anybody who knows a 13 year old.....

Edited November 22, 201411 yr by CarlSeibert

+1 for the Sansa cliip zip

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SanDisk_Sansa#Sansa_Clip_Zip

Color screen, AAC support

She (or her friends, eh Barbie?) can rockbox it

I used to have one of those Carl. Worked well for an mp3 player. 

Ah! Grahame's link carried the day. The current model seems to be the Sandisk Clip Sport, which is cheaper, comes in colors at 8 GB, and plays AAC.

Weird that Amazon is still selling old stock of the model before the model before last at higher prices than the current one. The lack of Rockbox-ability, maybe. No worries, I'm pretty sure Barbie don't Rockbox )

Thanks guys!