Public Service Announcement: there’s a healthy marketplace of refurbished and upgraded iPods from the 2004 era on eBay, the Classic 5.5 comes highly recommended with solid DAC from the factory but iPods mini with upgraded DAC, fresh battery, and large flash memory swaps for the old spinning disks are readily available.
I subscribe to Qobuz and buy a lot of lossless DRM free music and can recommend them as well, tho there was recently a big swath of the available music dropped due to licensing issues (hence the utility of downloading DRM free music). I also price shop against the digital albums and often a CD on eBay will be cheaper, I don’t mind missing out on the “24bit 192khz hifi” to save a few bucks.
Newer Sony Walkmans have lossless support and some can also act as a USB DAC. Unfortunately the UIs are still terrible (no search, only oversensitive alphabet scroll?), proprietary cables and the device slowly re-indexes every boot. Organizing music hasn't improved since 2000 with some albums being split into 10 artists if they have collaborations. Still, at least we don't have to use Sonic Stage any more, mine has a uSD slot, and mass storage largely works. It's a shame Zune went nowhere, the HD was a wonderful device.
But an iPod from the 2004 era is both hard to use and very heavy. You can get a tiny flash-based modern mp3 player for $30-$40, which is below the apparent price of a 2004 iPod on eBay.
Mmm agree to disagree, iPod classic is not a heavyweight device and the UX is what we had when I was a kid so easy AND nostalgic, but agreed the little sandisk clips solve the problem just as well.
Edit: I can't imagine swapping HDD for flash saves more than a few grams, can it?
Ipod classics have a spinning rust hdd. They are heavy. The 2004 4th gen 40 GB is 176 grams and is a bulky 110 cm3. That's quite a bit more than my pixel 5, which is 151 grams and just 81 cm3. In fact, could buy nearly any old phone and do better, immediately, and have a much nicer display and better bluetooth codecs and the ability to play lossless formats.
So what, you want to modify a good mp3 player to look more like a bad one?
With the classic iPod you've got a bad UI instead of a good UI and a large object instead of a small one. And while it will be lighter without the hard drive, it will still be a lot heavier than an mp3 player. It's pure downside on several different dimensions.
If you want to play your music on a device shaped like an iPod, it's even easier to use your existing phone.
I've had about 4 San Disk clips now. mostly because I lose them or put them through the wash.
some of the older models were definitely better, but at 20-40 bucks each and no real dependencies on the rest of my personal computer ecosystem it's a fair trade.
it's only that Spotify and YT music are easy to use that I haven't bought a new one. with enshitifacation being a thing I might go back
I subscribe to Qobuz and buy a lot of lossless DRM free music and can recommend them as well, tho there was recently a big swath of the available music dropped due to licensing issues (hence the utility of downloading DRM free music). I also price shop against the digital albums and often a CD on eBay will be cheaper, I don’t mind missing out on the “24bit 192khz hifi” to save a few bucks.