MP3 Players Buying Tips - ConsumerGuru
What to Look for When Buying MP3 Players
GURU says this about buying an MP3 Player!General
The first question to answer before buying an MP3 player is whether you already have a large collection of music was purchased before 2009 from one of the online stores, such as Apple’s iTunes Store or the Zune Marketplace. Although beginning in 2009 most of the largest stores, including iTunes, Zune Marketplace, Amazon’s MP3 Store, and Wal-Mart’s Music store, now allow purchase of music without copy protection, most music purchased before this time were encoded with either Apple’s or Microsoft’s proprietary copy protection software. This is critical, since in most cases the music you purchased from Apple will only work with Apple’s iPod line of players, and the music purchased from other online stores will play on most MP3 players EXCEPT iPods, unless you pay extra to decrypt all of your songs.
If your music library consists mainly of music you have purchased since 2009 or comes from tracks you have copied (or “rippped”) from your CD collection, then you are pretty much free to buy whatever MP3 player you wish, and be guaranteed your new player will still work with your library.
In general, most MP3 players offer comparable music playback quality. The areas of differentiation across MP3 players will be the ease of use in selecting and organizing songs, the capacity of the device, the size of the device, feature availability (such as FM tuner, video/photo playback, wireless connectivity), screen size and touchscreen capability, battery life, and availability of accessories.
Apple iTunes vs. Other Online Stores
Apple Computer’s iTunes online store is the most used online store in the market, with the largest selection of songs, videos, games, podcasts, and other content. The software for the store is free, and can be downloaded on to any computer (Mac or PC). The software is very easy to use, and offers many ways of accessing and organizing content. Apple now allows a majority of the songs in its stores to be purchased without digital rights software, allowing the songs to be played on any player, whether it be an iPod or from another manufacturer. But the iTunes store and iPod line of MP3 players were designed to work together in managing the music on the device, and all of the software in iTunes which makes managing the content a snap works only with iPods.
Microsoft’s Zune Marketplace is similar to Apple’s iTunes in that it also a wide collection of content, though with slightly less content than iTunes, and offers a range of content management capabilities. But as with the iTunes/iPod combination, the Zune Marketplace is designed to work only with the Zune line of MP3 players, so unless you own a Zune all you can do is at the Marketplace is buy music to be managed by the device’s software system.
Many of the other devices are designed to work with Microsoft’s Windows Media Player software, which has many of the capabilities of iTunes and Zune. The Windows Media Player is a software program that can be downloaded for free on to your PC, but is not a store itself—it links to other sores such as Napster or eMusic. Because Windows Media Player designed to work with a large number of devices and stores, the integration is not quite as seamless as with iTunes/iPod and Zune Marketplace/Zune. And many of the stores associated with Windows Media Player still sell songs only with Microsoft’s copy protection, which won’t allow them to be played on iPods.
For those who don’t care about integration with a PC, Amazon and Wal-Mart amongst others both offer online stores with large catalogs. But the software won’t help you manage the content on your device.
And finally there are a number of subscription music services, such as Rhapsody and Napster, that allow unlimited music listening across the entire catalog. The catch is you have to keep up your subscription—once you stop paying you lose access to your entire library. These services also work only with specific makes of MP3 players, and notably not with iPods.
Hard Drive vs. Flash Memory Players
There are two fundamental types of MP3 players: hard drive players and flash memory players. Hard drives can offer more storage, but are larger and bulkier, uses more battery life, and may be easier to break. Flash memory is very small, more energy efficient, and more resilient, but more expensive per GB of storage, though the gap with hard drives has been decreasing.
Key Player Specifications
Storage capacity (GB) – This is the gigabyte (GB) capacity of the device. Typically, around 1000 minutes or 250 hours of music can be stored in 1 GB. For video, over an hour can be stored in 1 GB.
Expansion slots – Some players have slots that allow you to insert a memory card, thus expanding the capacity of the device
Screen size – The size of the screen of the player, for looking at album art, pictures, and videos.
Battery life – estimated time between charges.
Features and Options
Color screen – Especially important for photos and videos.
Touchscreen – Allows navigation by touching the screen, rather through buttons, pads, or scroll wheels
Photo capability – Ability to download and display photos.
Video capability – Ability to download and display video, either from a camcorder or downloaded.
Built-in FM Tuner – Allows reception of radio.
Wireless Internet browsing – Allows web access (if an available wifi network is present)
Wireless music sharing – Allows one player to connect wirelessly with another and share music
Accessory availability – Entire industries have sprung up to supply accessories to MP3 players. These include everything from noise cancelling earbuds, to car radio connectors, to pedometers inserted in shoes, to entire hifi systems. In general, there are far more accessories made for Apple’s iPod has than any other player.