Can anyone recommend a simple mp3 player to listen to audiobooks? Is the MECHEN X55 (claimed 2000mAh) Android 10 one any good?
My background: I am currently using Rockbox on a ClipZip player, unfortunately the thing is failing and most newer models don’t run Rockbox.
AGPTEK players have 60h battery life, but don’t run Rockbox, and their firmware misses basic features of Rockbox, such as automatic bookmarks for audiobooks: I can’t easily go back and forth between different books. Rockbox automatically stores one bookmark per folder, so it is very easy to switch as long as each book series is in a separate folder.
Now I am thinking about getting an Android player + AntennaPod, but they tend to have short battery life, often < 10h.
I sideload my books and don’t care much about any other streaming apps. The outdated Android players are unsafe to connect to the network anyway.
Is AntennaPod + Android the way to go, or should I look into a DAP that runs Rockbox, like the HIFI Walker H2? Unfortunately these also have very bad battery lifetime around 10h.
HiBy R1 also looks good (non-Android, Rockbox), but only 15h play time claimed.
I run it about ten hours over a day I am working as a multi-drop delivery driver with about half of that on Play and half on Pause. The battery usage of the app is relatively minor compared with other calls on the phone’s usage which for me typically totals about 30/40% between each daily charge. This is on a relatively new Samsung S25FE.
Just checked and in each of the last two days SABP used about 4% of batter over the course of a ten hour shift. Interestingly, listening to podcasts used about 10% over about three hours. Both from downloads.
(I actually use SABP for listening to my favourite music radio shows downloaded via my lapttop rather than audio books)
Wow, that is much better than I thought. Then something must be wrong with my phone, thanks for checking! This is even better than most dedicated players.
Bear in mind that dedicated players have much smaller capacity batteries than do smartphones. I used to use a Rockbox’d Sansa Clip+ which easily got me through a long day but it only had that one job to do. I still keep the Clip+ in my work bag as back up though it is years since I last used it - basically since the work vans were re-freshed with ones that come with Bluetooth rather than an Aux In socket on their radios.