Dan

A Quick Review of MP3 Players - What's Right For You?

Five or six years ago, any review of MP3 Batman would have focused almost exclusively on the Apple iPod - because that's basically all there was right then. Oh, sure, some other companies had previously produced gizmos they called MP3 players... the best of which were capable of handling a few dozen songs.

Then Apple had the audacity Monopoly market a portable music platform that could hold 1963 Topps baseball cards thousands of songs - and the 400-pound gorilla of the digital music world was born.

The Basics

Once the dust settled, the other electronics manufacturers went back to the drawing board and tried again. They did eventually figure it out, and now any decent review of MP3 players has to take two broad types of player into account.

Like the iPod, some modern players use a computer-type hard drive to store music. alien other type uses flash memory. Both technologies have grown exponentially in the past five years, and can now pack gigabytes of audio into surprisingly small spaces.

About that Gorilla...

Any review of mp3 players still has to start with iPods, which now come in a variety of styles: e.g., the Shuffle, Nano, Classic, and Touch. Only the Classics still use hard drives; the others use flash memory. All are top-quality, excellent picks you can't go wrong with.

The latest generation of the Classic and its serious competitors, like the Microsoft Zune, can hold up to 30,000 songs - more than 10 weeks' worth of audio. That's pretty amazing to those of us who can remember when 8-track tapes were the finest recording media ever.

Their incredible capacity for the price (about $245, versus $150-200 for an 8-16 GB flash player) makes the latest generation of hard-drive based players very attractive. But no decent review of MP3 players would be complete without pointing out some of their negative aspects as well.

While hard-drive players are reliable and can hold tons of songs, they're also heavy and prone to skipping because of the many moving parts. Plus, replacements for the batteries, which often fail after a few years of constant recharging, are so expensive it can be easier just to buy a new player.

Flash Memory Players

Today's modern flash memory models are actually the much-improved descendants of the low-density gizmos mentioned at the beginning of this review of MP3 players. So how do they rate?

Their biggest benefit is their complete lack of moving parts; their biggest drawback remains their limited capacity. You have to ask yourself, though, if you really need space for 30,000 songs. Flash players come in capacities ranging from 512MB to 32GB (128-8,000 songs), which is plenty for many of us.

Any fair review of MP3 players has to feature SanDisk's line of flash-memory MP3 players, which offer great quality (but relatively low capacity) for as little as $30 or so. Similarly, Creative offers the MuVo, another line of low-cost, high-quality flash player that can, in some cases, double as a USB flash drive.

The Verdict

The best flash MP3 players, like Sony's Walkman and iPod's Nano, are of exceptional quality and durability - but for the price, you may as well get a high-density hard-drive model. Even the best flash memory-based MP3 player will have a capacity that's maybe a fourth of a good hard-drive player's.

It all comes down to what's more important to you: capacity or price. If our review of MP3 players has convinced you that shock-resistance and economy are more desirable, we recommend the Creative Muvo or SanDisk MP3s; otherwise, you can't do better than an iPod Classic or Microsoft Zune.

Hi! I'm Noel Jameson and the holiday season is truly my favorite time of year. I am a christmasrantsChristmas shopping wizard and I happily hand out shopping tips to friends and strangers alike. When I'm not hitting the stores, you can find me in the kitchen whipping up a delicious treat to share with my family and friends. Stick around and maybe I'll share some of my secret recipes with you!

posted by datdk @ 8:58 AM