MP3 Players - Must Read Before Buying
Author: Jakob Culver 

Often when looking for an mp3 player people get confused and are unsure on what they should be looking for in the product. There are so many different types of mp3 players out there, they come in flash memory, they come with a built in hard drive and you also have the option of using CD to make mp3 playable disc. On top of this you will also have to choose what sort of brands you want, the capacity of the mp3 player and how much it will store and are there any extra features that you want. This is no easy task so lets answer some of these questions now.

When we talk about types of mp3 players there are currently 3 categories on the market. Flash based players, hard-drive based players and mp3 CDs. Lets talk about these.

Flash Based Players

Flash based players are the tiniest mp3 players. They contain a built in flash memory chip and contain no moving parts. Because of there portability, size and the fact that they house no moving parts means that they are the perfect solution if you are going to be listening to your music sport activities. There is one major problem however with these types of mp3 players, they come at a high cost per megabyte of storage. There storage capabilities range from 32MB to 2GB and the most popular models seem to be those from the iRiver iFP series, Creative Muvo line series and the iPod Shuffle series.

Hard-Drive Based Players

Hard-Drive based mp3 players use a 1.8 inch hard disk drive to store music. The hard disk drives can hold huge amounts of data, most come with well over a 20 GB capacity, some will allow you to store up to 60 GB. If you want to be able to store large amounts of music on a portable device (i.e. 1000s and 1000s of songs), than a hard-drive based mp3 player is the way to go. There is however one thing you should be aware of, hard-drives contain moving parts - because of this hard-drive based mp3 player are not suitable if you want to listen to your music while involving yourself in sport. These types of players also come as micro hard-drive players which are smaller but larger than flash based players, there storage capabilities are around the 2 GB to 8 GB range. One of the most popular hard-drive based players is the Apple iPod, the best selling hard-drive based mp3 player.

MP3 CD Discs/Players

Another option if you are looking to have a large amount of music in one unit is to burn your mp3s from your computer onto a mp3 disc. An mp3 disc is a regular CD with mp3s burnt onto it as data. You can normally fit about 150 - 200 mp3s on an mp3 disc and than place it in a CD player that plays mp3 encoded disc. The down side of mp3 discs is that they are of the larger scale and if knocked or bumped will tend to skip a lot.

Well there we go, you have just had a brief overview of the 3 types of mp3 players that exist and the pro and cons that they carry. Hopefully this has helped you a bit to understand the concepts of mp3 players a lot better.