Decide what to buy

Lots of people want to be able to listen to their CDs on the go, but how many hours worth of music can you actually fit on a portable music device? That’s the question posed on Ask Jack over at the Guardian today.

Predictably, the answer is variable as it depends on the type of compression you use for your music tracks. Most of us use MP3s - they’re simple to create and are playable on most devices, but they’re not always the most efficient in terms of space.

Jack tells us that a 1GB music player will hold around eight hours of high quality MP3 music, rising to 16 hours at a lower quality, and recommends a good guide to creating high-quality MP3s. If space is an issue for you, he suggests using the more efficient AAC encoding to save space but retain quality, as it will translate to about 12 hours of music on a 1GB player.

Now that you can get great-looking devices capable of holding 8GB of music like Sony’s catchily-named NW-A1200 Walkman, that means just under 100 hours of high-quality music in your hand.

It’s crucial if you have all that music on there to have robust power to keep it going, and that means good battery life. Looking at the Sony NW-A1200 reviews on Reevoo.com from people who’ve actually bought this player, shows they are impressed with the battery life of the device, rating it ‘average’ or ‘above average’ overall. On the down side, usability appears to be a bit of an issue with comments including ‘hard to work’ and ’small screen’.

But does the average music listener need all this? Would they rather sacrifice storage space in favour of price or ease of use? Looking at the MP3 players top-rated by four or more purchasers, the 4GB capacity Samsung YP-Z5A and old-style iPod Nano come out the favourites, followed by the 2GB Sony NW-E005.

The Sony NW-A1200 is priced between £100-180, compared to a second generation iPod Nano, now available at under £100. Plus each of the top-rated players received the comment ‘easy to use’, in contrast to the Sony.

How much music does one really need on their portable player? As one reviewer of the 4GB Nano says: ’small but with plenty of space for as much music as anyone could want’.

Blog posted on Thursday, October 25th, 2007 at 2:13 pm under News, Products. Leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.