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Portable MP3 Players Buying Guide
Buying a portable mp3 player can be a little daunting, but all the players we reviewed were highly rated by users and experts with tons of features and storage capacity for all avid music fans. A portable mp3 player is designed to store digital music files you either download from online music stores like iTunes or that you copy from your own CDs at home and then transfer to the player. The smaller portable mp3 players has 512MB of flash memory and hold up to 120 songs with up to 19 hours of playback time. Storage ranges from 512MB all the way up to 80 GB and prices start below $100 and go up to over $300. Many come with FM tuners, voice recorders, bright screens, and many are able to store photos. The 80 GB players hold up to 20,000 songs, up to 100 hours of video, provide gapless playback, and have a searchable interface. The Apple iPods have a great click wheel design for searching your song database or selecting from menus. The top makers of portable mp3 players are Apple, Creative Labs, iRiver, Panasonic, Phillips, Samsung, SanDisk, and Sony. Apple has the largest market share, but some new models from their competitors are starting to challenge their dominance. We will get into specific models below and discuss the advantages or disadvantages of each one in our reviews.
Best Portable MP3 Players:
If you are an average music fan, you probably have a few 100 songs you would like to listen to on any given day, so the Apple 1GB iPod Shuffle should suffice. The iPod shuffle has 1 GB flash memory, holds up to 240 songs, gives you up to 12 hours of playback, includes iPod dock, and weighs less than an ounce. This brand new model will be available online at stores like CircuitCity.com or Apple.com for about $80. Again, most people don't need much more than this model to enjoy their music listening. The Apple 4GB iPod Nano with Color LCD ($190) is a step up with 4GB flash memory, up to 1000 songs, holds up to 12,500 photos, has a 40% brighter screen, almost 24 hours of battery life, and offers a super-thin, sleek design that might make your friends jealous. Although Apple dominates this market, we also like the SanDisk 2GB Digital Audio Player ($90) with 2 GB flash memory, holds almost 500 songs, gives you up to 32 hours of playback, has an FM tuner, FM/voice recorder, and photo thumbnail playback. Consumers rank these 3 portable mp3 players very high and so do we.
Apple iPods - Shuffle & Nano:
We all know that Apple is a very innovative company and they have clearly shown their capabilities with the latest portable mp3 players they've released. The Apple 80GB Color iPod with Video is an incredible little piece of technology. This 5th Generation ipod makes us all wonder what could be next since this gadget offers everything. You get an 80 GB hard drive so you can store you favorite music, pictures, movies, or tv shows. You can also store iPod games, podcasts, audio books, etc. You get the picture that this invention is revolutionizing handheld devices. With capabilities of holding almost 20,000 songs, 100 hours of video files, and 1000's of photos, the new iPod should sell well during the holiday season. The patented click wheel design makes searching a breeze and you can control volume, create playlists, or launch photo slideshows. This iPod features 2 ports - a doct connector and a stereo minijack. Audio and composite video can be routed through the minijack. Compatible formats include - For audio, AAC, Protected AAC, MP3, MP3 VBR, Audible, Apple Lossless, AIFF and WAV. For photos, the iPod accepts JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, PSD (Mac only) and PNG formats. For video, it will accept H.264 and MPEG-4 files. Price at about $330 this player is expensive, but offers tons of great features. Of course the iPod Nano or Shuffle are cheaper and still perform solidly.