How to Select a Portable MP3 Player
Choosing when and where you are able to listen to your favorite music has changed dramatically over the last 50 years. Some might argue that the medium itself has enjoyed the greatest change; however, it is the portability of music and the ability to listen privately that have made personal music payers, well … personal.
And not only has portability increased over the years, so has the sound quality of the music. Other changes and improvements to portable music players have extended to battery life, high-tech headphones, and downloading from the Internet. But, choosing a MP3 player isn’t as simple as grabbing one off the shelf. There are many choices to be made — beyond the price.
Samsung 2GB MP3 Player (Model No: YPU5JQR)
Hard Drive / Flash Memory
All portable MP3 players use one of two different mediums for storing your music: hard drive or flash memory.
- Hard Drive: Players with hard drives usually offer the largest amount of storage space but have a tendency to be physically larger. This means they are much more susceptible to permanent failure due to the fragile nature of hard disks.
- Flash Memory: When comparing song-for-song, flash memory players cannot store as many as their hard drive counterparts. But, they have the clear advantage with the ability to accept external cards. Flash memory also gets the durability factor vote due to its resilient nature to defend hazards such as dropping and they don’t suffer from fragmentation.
An MP3’s storage capacity is rated by megabyte (MB) or gigabyte (GB). One megabyte (1MB) equals approximately one minute of CD-quality MP3 music and songs are ripped from their source at 128kps.
- 4GB = 1,000 songs – 20GB = 5,000 songs – 60GB = 15,000 songs – 80GB = 20,000 songs
- 64MB = approximately one hour of music – 512MB card = approximately eight hours of music
File Formats
Ensure the MP3 player you chose can play the file formats you use most. The following is a list of the most commonly used file formats (in alphabetical order) and is not meant to be an all-inclusive list.
- Audio
AAC, AIFF, Apple Lossless, ASF, Audible, FLAC, MP3, MPEG4, OGG, WAV, WMA, WMA Lossless
- Video
DivX4, DivX5, H.264, Motion JPEG, MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, WMV, XviD
- Images
BMP, GIF, JPG, PNG
USB
Although the available hard drive space needed and software required to communicate with your MP3 player might demand a newer computer equipped with the latest-and-greatest specs, an available USB port (1.1 or 2.0) is mandatory for managing your music files. If upload/download speeds are slow, consider hardware improvements to your computer: USB 2.0 (versus 1.1), a larger hard drive, etc.
 Sylvania 8GB MP3/Video Player (Model No: SMPK8858) |
 Coby 4GB MP3/Video Player (Model No: MP7054G) |
ID3 Tags
If you’ve ever wondered how MP3 players know the artist, album, and the name of each music song, it is from the embedded ID3 tag. The ID3 tag can also assist in organizing your files on your player using LCD screen (if available).
Batteries
Hard-drive-based MP3 players — especially one that have video capability — can run up your battery power bill very quickly. But, if you’re just listening to music then your hard-drive player should keep going for approximately 14 hours.
Being sans of any moving parts, flash memory is a non-mechanical solid state drives which requires less power to operate than hard drives. This means your flash memory MP3 player should have a battery life of around 20–50 hours.
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