Technological Dilemma

This is my mp3 player. It's a SanDisk Sansa Fuze I got as birthday gift in 2008 I believe. As evidence by the tape holding it together it's been pretty well used/abused to the point that the screen messes up, I can't pause, the wheel hardly responds so forget about lowering or increasing the volume, I can't hear anything out of the left earbud, and I have a hard time shutting it off. It was pretty banged up by the time I needed more space (since it comes with a microSD expansion slot). It served me well for 5 good years and it's about time I need a new one.

The store it was purchased from no longer carries the Sansa Fuze nor any other store I know of in the city carries it's next generation, the Fuze+. Sure I could purchase one on the internet but the reviews for the Fuze + are not so favourable on amazon.

So what options are there? With the file sizes growing larger as well as my music collection I'm looking for something that can hold more than 4GB of space. 16 GB should suffice I think. From the brands that I've seen, I'm looking at HipStreet, Sony, and Apple.

I have never heard of the HipStreet brand before and I'm guessing it's something along the lines of the COBY mp3 players: the cheap ones if you're not looking for anything fancy. HipStreet has a touch screen device that comes in 16GB but reviews of it are not that satisfactory so there's no chance of me getting that one.

Sony also has a 16GB mp3 player. It costs less than an apple product and it not being an apple product I'll be fine with random file formats (as I have mix of mp3, wma, and aac). Sony is also a recognizable brand. I could go with it but I don't find it aesthetically appealing with a very limited colour selection (black). Asthetics shouldn't have to with the sound quality and when I listened to the sample track in the Sony store the sound was okay to me (or maybe it's the headphones that they were selling). With this I believe I can use windows media player or winamp to transfer files.

And the choice I'm leaning towards is the iPod. It's not cheap but it is quite attractive with the metallic colour choices and it's a well known brand. As for what to choose, I'm stuck between the nano and the 16GB touch. The touch costs more than the nano and has extra features such as a camera and wi-fi capabilities, features that are something I would rather look for in a smartphone or a tablet. My current phone (a nokia c3-00) may not be Skype friendly but it can still access Facebook and I can upload photos with my phone to Facebook. My main purpose is basically to listen to music while I'm on the bus, in the car, or walking to places so I may lean towards getting the nano over the touch (I don't need to play angry birds or temple run and I have candycrush on Facebook). The drawbacks to this are the touch screen and how I upload things to the device. I find touch screens are so sensitive that I fear that I'll break it at some point within the first year or two but I guess I can by an accessory like a cover to take care of that (more or less protect it). And then I hear the only way to upload tracks to it is through iTunes (which I already have) and with some of my files being wmv I wonder if they will play or will I have to find the cd's I got them from and rip them into a compatible format.

So basically my dilemma is between should I get an iPod or a Sony Walkman. Should I go with quality or aesthetics? Should I move onto something different or stay with something similar to my old mp3 player? Is the $149 dollars worth buying an iPod or should I go with something $40 cheaper? I may be from Canada but a Black Friday sale might make the difference. I guess I'll find out by then