LATEST MP3 PLAYERS

SOLID STATE MP3 PLAYERS

Suggested Models
iPod Nano, iPod Touch, iRiver E10, Creative Nano Plus
Budget
Rs 1800 – Rs 15,000

Solid state memory based players are the hardy dudes of the MP3 player world. They have no moving parts inside them and are best suited to be used as rugged music players with limited capacity. The maximum capacity available in these is roughly around 8 GB, and the higher capacity models amongst these cost a bomb. Solid state players generally use flash memory for storage and come with the usual positives and negatives of flash memory based devices. The file transfer rates of these devices are mostly more than hard-drive based players.
Since these players have no moving parts and only depend on solid state components to store data, they don’t need any shock absorption. Both these properties make these players lighter than their hard-drive based counterparts. Solid state players come in various shapes and sizes and don’t need to adhere to any limitations due to their flexible storage components, thus we get to see some really small mp3 players that can even be used as pieces of jewelry—and considering their higher price per MB ratio, large capacity models can even be considered as gems!
Again due to an absence of any moving parts, solid state players do not have to deal with most physical phenomenon like friction and heat, and thus they can better utilize their battery power for playing music rather than spinning hard-drives. Since data is not read from a physical medium but from a solid state one, these players don’t need to use many error correction mechanisms, also saving power spent on these computational processes

HARD DRIVE BASED MP3 PLAYERS

Suggested Models
A2, Apple iPod Classic, Creative Zen Vision: M
Budget
Rs 16,000 – Rs 24,000

Generally considered the high capacity behemoths of media players, these devices do much more than just play music. You can usually make out a hard-drive based player from a solid state one just by its size and weight. These boys are big and bulky, usually with huge screens and feature lists that can fill up multiple pages. Since product designers get the luxury of space from these devices they tend to cram them full of options and capabilities.
Hard drive based MP3 players come in capacities generally greater than 20 GB and go upto 160 GB, and can even play multiple video formats and feature decent photo management features to rival cameras. Some come with USB OTG (On The Go) functionality so that you can copy files to and from other USB based storage devices like MP3 player, cameras and USB sticks. These devices have enough space to store all the data that is needed, as their price per MB is way lower compared to flash based players.
However since these players use hard-disks as their storage medium, they have to be handled delicately as they can’t take much abuse like their solid state brothers. These can and will lose data and even become non-operational if they are dropped. Also since hard drives have motors, they can quickly suck up battery life while watching movies and the like. Thus hard-drive players have lesser battery life compared to flash based players. Since hard-disk drives don’t usually come smaller than 2.5-inches, these players have to be at least this wide