Tips for Choosing an MP3 Player
There are a variety of MP3 players available on the market. The ultimate goal is to choose the player that is best for you, or the person you are buying it for. First of all, you should decide what the main purpose of the player is going to be. In most cases it will be for music playback. Some players have the capability of video playback. If you are looking for that feature you should consider an mp3 player with a lot of storage space. The focus of this post is going to be on the player itself.
Some Points to consider:
The two kinds of memory that are in use are hard drives and flash memory. The tradeoff between the two is durability and storage size. Hard drives come in large storage sizes, but they have moving parts. Therefore dropping or shaking of the player can damage them or cause music skipping. Flash memory has no moving parts, so movement of the player shouldn’t disturb the playback. The drawback is that flash memory is still more expensive than hard drives, so currently flash memory players don’t have as much storage space as the less expensive hard drives.
The other feature you want to research a bit is the file formats supported by the player. Virtually all music players support the MP3 file format. While those made to support Windows formats also support the Windows Media Audio (WMA) format. If you go for the iPod or other Apple players, they use the AAC format. If you already have a good-sized music collection, be mindful of the format it is in. The supported file format can potentially limit where you buy your music online. Most people are fine with the MP3 format, while the audiophiles out there may want something a little fancier.