In search of the ideal mp3 player
Follow me on my hunt for an good MP3 Player, just could'nt hold the iPod mania anymore.What should I look for in a player?
Sound quality would be my top most concern, I'm a little fussy about how music sounds. The next biggest concern would be memory to hold atleast a 1000 songs at 192kbs, and yes I prefer MP3 for its simplicity (atleast 5Gb). I'm not a big fan of DRM so multiple bit rates and non-DRM formats are a necissity. And finally battery life and a small form factor make all the difference. Personally I Dont really care about videos/photos.
The iPod
Even though its a universal favorite, I did use a friends player for a while and found the sound to be slightly flat and lagging in the top end of 18-22khz. Average sound quality is what I can say. And using iTunes just didnt catch my fancy.
iShuffle
Interestingly it seems the iShuffle has better sound quality. But limited memory (1gb), lack of a display and steep learning curve for the controls put me off.
Initially I checked out flash devices, skip free playing is a huge advantage. But price/gb really hits you, by the time you reach usable levels like 4gb. So my hunt kind of narrowed down to hard disk based players.
Creative ZEN Micro
I've always been a fan of creative in terms of 'bang for the buck' and Zen Xtra 30gb sounds good. There is one universal gripe that people are putting up with, All of Creative's 5gb and above HD based players need a special partition which can be used as USB data drive. In short music & data cant be on the same disk :(
Iriver
Surprisingly iRiver seems to top in sound quality. Some reviews are talking of a sluggish interface, and obiously Expensive.
So far I have my mind set on IRiver H10 20gb.. let me know if I'm wrong
posted by Girish Bellalcheru @ 12:46 AM
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