MP3 Players Buying Guide
Personal jukeboxes are the hottest gadgets for listening to music on the move since the original Walkman. You can store literally hundred or thousands of tracks, access them in any order without a break and keep your entire music collection in your pocket wherever you go. But unlike when Sony dominated the Walkman era, there are literally hundreds of brands vying for your hard earned personal jukebox (AKA MP3 player) cash.
Brands
Apple’s ubiquitous iPod range (iPod, Shuffle, Nano etc) dominates the market with serious style but there are plenty of other makes to choose from. Big names include Creative, iRiver, Archos and indeed Sony but the shops are also awash with more affordable players from completely unknown brands. Flash memory MP3 players in particular are very robust so you should not have reliability problems either way.
Whether you are looking for iPod kudos or portable music on a tight budget, the most important choice comes down to how many songs you need versus the size, weight, battery life and cost of the MP3 player. For 20 minutes in the gym a couple of times a week, an inexpensive Flash-memory MP3 player is ideal. Flash MP3 players record to smaller capacity chip-memory but are tiny and light enough to slip in a pocket without danger of pulling your shorts down on the treadmill. For those faced with four-hours of commuting every day, you need a player that offers the widest choice of music and batteries that will outlast a British Rail sandwich – i.e. a higher-capacity hard-disc jukebox.
Brands:
Memory
Is bigger better?
Despite what retailers will tell you, having a hard-disc that is never more than half full is a waste of money. Personal jukebox storage capacity is quoted in MegaBytes (MB) or GigaBytes (GB) and on average 1MB equates to approximately 1 minute of music – or about 4MB per song assuming you don’t have too many half-hour long rock anthems in your collection. Thus a 512MB Flash MP3 player will hold approximately 130 songs while a 30GB Hard-Disc player can store a whopping 7,500.
Memory Size:
Flash-memory players offer up to 2GB capacity for as little as £70, with 1GB and 512MB models costing little more than a couple of CDs. Hard-disc MP3 players come into their own from around 4GB but cost upwards of £150. As capacity increases, so too does the cost, size and weight of the player – so expect models with massive 40GB (around £200) or 60GB (around £300) to be relatively bulky.
OK, it’s nice to have your entire music collection at your fingertips but don’t forget you can link the device to your PC and chop and change tracks everyday. If you live and breathe your PC, then an inexpensive Flash player and a blow-out on new music might be better bet than the latest mega-capacity jukebox.
Memory Type:
Software
Not all personal jukeboxes are MP3 players and this includes Apple’s iPod, which uses AAC format rather than MP3. Thankfully almost all players come with dedicated software that ensures you have the right format music on your PC and converting it where necessary. Apple’s iTunes will happily convert your entire library of MP3s complete with the ID-tags for track, album and artist names for example.
The software supplied with more advanced players allows you to store, file and playback music on your PC, and then automatically synchronise those songs to the player over a USB cable. But if you do have a library of music already in-situ on your PC, double check the player is compatible with the program (Windows Media etc) or that the supplied software will convert formats.
With any music software you have the ability to change the bit-rate that your CDs are ripped at to either save space (lowering the bit rate) or improve sound quality (increasing the bit rate). Most software defaults to reasonable quality 128kbps but you can drop to 64kbps to double the space – although the music will sound flatter than hedgehog on the M1.
If you are likely to plug your MP3 player into a hi-fi system you may want to use 192kbps or higher, which sounds better but eats up storage space. Audiophiles can even choose variable bit rate (VBR) or lossless formats for the ultimate in sound quality – but at up to 800kbps, you will need a huge hard-disc player to store a decent number of songs.
PC Interface:
Audio/Video Format:
Battery life
Poor battery life has been the Achilles’ heel of MP3 players, crippling access to thousands of stored songs to just a few hours of playback time. Manufacturer’s claims for battery life are optimistic, bordering on hilarious, and about two-thirds to three-quarters of the run-time quoted is more realistic.
Flash memory players are less power-hungry than hard-disc players and models with Li-ON battery-packs offer around 10 to 15 hours continuous playback. If you are likely to be out and about even longer, models that use disposable batteries will keep you in music as long as you have access to a good supply of fresh AA or AAA cells.
Hard-disc MP3 players have larger batteries but are still only likely to give you a maximum 6 to 8 hours of continuous playback. Models with better battery life invariable cost more of course – but this is often a better investment than extra storage capacity that you don’t need.
Battery Life:
MP4 Players
Screens put a big demand on battery power although a large colour screen is essential if you opt for one of the new generation players that can store and display digital images as well as music. Models with the very largest screens – usually 3in or larger are generally designed for audio and video and get the grandiose title of portable media players or PMPs.
These use MP4 technology to compress video files small enough to fit several hours of video on your hard disc but are larger, weightier and more expensive (£250 upwards) than simple audio-only players. Some models from the likes of Archos and iRiver can even hook-up to your TV aerial or digital TV decoder and record your favourite TV programs just like a VCR or DVD-recorder. Now instead of just listening to music you can also catch-up on Eastenders on the way to work. Great on the train – but don’t try it on the days you cycle to the office.