Fourteen Digital Music Players Reviewed

prostoalex writes "The PC Magazine reviews 14 digital music players that can play MP3, WMA or AAC files. The editor's choice among the models compared includes Apple iPod Mini and iRiver iFP-390T. The editors decided to conduct a single review of both Flash- and HDD-based music players. Of special interest is the battery life test as well as sound quality test. Even though the entire article is published online in HTML, the summary of the features is available in PDF only."

Comments

Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[monstroyer]

And out of the 14 that are reviewed ZERO play Ogg Vorbis.

Marketers, manufacturers, and capitalists: LISTEN UP!

* I'm 29, single, and work in the computer industry. Therefore, I like gadgets and have disposable income.

* I'm a hobbiest musician and I have been encoding everything, no exception, in OGG VORBIS since 2003. Like the teenagers say, so last year.

* It is feasible to port the Vorbis decoder/encoder to a platform without floating point support.

There's your demographic. Stop reaching for the teenagers and start making products for people who can afford them and desperately need them.

Your profit margins will thank you.

PS: I'm posting this from an iBook. I won't buy an iPod until it supports OGG!

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[American AC in Paris]

Oh, get yerself a Rio Karma and quitcher whinin'. I'm a video freak, and you don't see me bitching about how hardly any consumer TV sets support anything more exotic than RCA component in, do you?

The manufacturers have heard the Cry of the Hardcore Ogg Fan, and they've responded with a collective "meh." Most of them simply don't give a damn about your niche. Rio does. Support Rio and quit acting like you're all downtrodden.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[dasmegabyte]

Wait -- that's better looks? It looks like a Samsonite briefcase from the 1980s, and what's up with that scroll control? Was it designed by Ed Wood?

Furthermore, 20 gig for $400 MSRP isn't cheaper -- it's the SAME PRICE as the iPod. I know, street prices are cheaper, but MSRP was the comparison used in this article as well.

The FM tuner, voice recorder, Vorbis support and optical out are worthwhile features for some, but then again so are AAC support iTunes integration, iTMS support, FireWire and the seamless design with only three ports.

The size -- both physical and storage -- is dead on, as is the battery life. And I'll give you this: while the iPod looks kind of like a cross between a plastic Easter Egg and a shaving mirror, this thing looks like a high tech cell phone. If you don't like the looks of the iPod because it's too postmodern, this is what you want.

This is no iPod killer. But is an agressive iPod competitor. That's good for us iPod fans as well as the detractors.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Mr Smidge]

Think about this for a second, even if it's not a plausible idea. I believe that if Vorbis and FLAC were the de-facto codecs for lossy and lossless compression, then we could be making far more technological advances in the multimedia field, and that businesses selling digital music playing devices would be more competitive.

Even if there were tons of audio codecs, but all of them open and unencumbered, I believe that the situation would be better because we could all concentrate on making our products and not worry about codecs, because they'd all be cheap to implement, and no licensing to worry about.

So, in my eyes, that's a good *ideal* situation. Can we get near to that ideal situation? Is it worth getting to that ideal situation?

Of course, most people are generally lazy, but is there anything that a few people that do care about Vorbis etc. can do? How can we encourage adoption of Vorbis/FLAC?

Off the top of my head:
* In whatever next kick-ass all-in-one media playing/ripping solution comes with KDE/Gnome, make it rip to Vorbis by default.
* A community effort towards making optimised hardware implementations of the Vorbis/FLAC codecs designs freely available. That would allow the chips to be made relatively easily once some company wants to pick it up.
* A vorbis-biased portable media player made by Vorbis enthusiasts who know what they're on about? Perhaps in the same vein as that Linux-only HDTV PCI card?
* Bundle said portable media player with the latest packaged version of Linux Distribution XYZ? Proclaim loudly "free portable music player!" all over it.

I *know* that few people care. A bit like lots of people don't care about voting, or who runs the country. But it's still pretty important. We certainly don't want to be in the situation (heaven forbid this should ever happen) where WMA is the only format around and licensing costs are continually hiked up by Microsoft.

Rio Karma

[Dante]

Christ where is the Karma? My Karma just kicks ass, It uses USB 2.0 and Ethernet. Supports Linux. Sounds great, gets loud when I want it to be. Came with decent earphones Sennheisers no less. Has amazing battery life and weights just a few ounces, and holds 20 gigs.

And get this, it does ogg and flac, why would I want anything else?

Re:Rio Karma

[Yarn]

Price isn't the only reason to buy a karma. It also plays ogg and flac. The sound quality is slightly better than the ipod in my experience, and it can more-or-less eliminate gaps between songs in the same album. If you like crossfading it can do that too.

The 15hr battery life is another big plus.

The hard drive *is* a problem though. My one started making clicking noises, and I feared the worst, but it has got better.

Strange Selection

[jhage]

No Rio players at all (either Nitrus, Karma or any other). One Creative. Whole bunch of really odd choices (Sony MD player?). Given what they reviewed, I guess the iPod would come out on top.

FM support

[Dark Paladin]

I'm rather interested in seeing some of these that support FM radio. I hadn't really thought about it, since other than NPR I haven't listened to much radio for the last 18 months (why bother? It's the same damned stuff they were playing 3 years before that!).

But it makes some sense - most walkman's, even CD based ones, have AM/FM radio support. A MP3 player shouldn't be that different.

Though, maybe there is a very small portable XM radio player. Hm - something to look into.

Missing choices

[wizarddc]

I know they could review only so many devices, but I'm disappointed they didn't review any Archos products at all. I've had my Jukebox Studio 20 for 2 years and it still works great. It might be a little heavier than most, but battery life has never been an issue for me. This thing rules. Why did they review 9 Memory players, and only 3 HD ones? What gives?

Who else had their favorite player ignored in this?

Why wouldn't they include the regular iPod?

[Toxygen]

Maybe they were trying to review the newer players on the market, I dunno, but the iPod has seen 3 generations so far and having just bought a 3rd gen iPod a few months ago I'd be interested to see how it compares. The last generation is certainly more recent than some of the players they reviewed, so why wouldn't they include it?

other mp3 player review source

[hackman]

It seems like it is hard to find factual reviews of mp3 players. This might be useful to some of you, check out the playerblog site which has postings of mp3 player reviews.

Try the N-Gage, seriously.

[Renaud]

I know the jokes about the original N-Gage never seem to end around here, but I've been perfectly happy with mine and I still fail to find anything today that comes close in terms of functionality. Consider this:

* State of the art phone

Tri-band GSM (I live and am using it in France, but it worked flawlessly during my trip to the Bay Area a few months ago) with the IMHO great Nokia usability.

And please, the whole sidetalkin' stuff is really overblown : I see no reason not to always use it as I do with the included hands free kit (2 earspeakers and a speed dial remote to take incoming calls or make new ones using voice-recognition)

MP3/MIDI ringtones, etc... and Bluetooth (improves your sex life!)

* MP3/AAC player.

Ok, MMCs aren't cheap and space is rather limited (we're talking a few hundred megs, not gigs), but my 128Mb one easily holds a few games + one album, which is more than enough for the daily commute time if you think about it.

Before leaving, I just connect it to my laptop using a standard mini-USB cable, and it shows up as a regular USB mass storage device under Windows or Linux, like your average digicam. That also makes it a USB key you're less likely to lose than a real one (because it's also your phone, so you'd better pay attention to it :) )

And OGG support is coming through third party software.

* FM tuner

with instant access key, and which you can record to AAC.

* Games

Looking at Tony Hawk Pro Skater or Tomb Raider, I'd say the N-Gage roughly has the horsepower of a PlayStation 1.
I'm not using that much actually, but all the other features still make me love my N-Gage

* Software : Symbian S60 system

That means a beautiful, consistent UI, and a stable OS.
The included software is good : WAP browser, SSL-enabled IMAP/POP3/SMS integrated message center, the usual calculator/pda stuff, RealOne player... ... and lots of third party software like Opera (which is *real* good and usable), streaming radios clients, etc...

I also love CityMaps, paid $5 for the single city version of this map software/route planner and it's so much handier than carrying a map or a separate device (also no recurring costs to use it since it's offline)

* It's ONE device

That's what buys me with the N-Gage : I don't like carrying too much stuff around, having to reach for it when I need it, and risking to forget them before leaving.

There I have MP3/radio/phone/games/basic PDA/internet client(+bluetooth modem) in just one device, and I've found this nowhere else.

(I don't care about the games, just the MP3/phone/internet/3rd party software capabilities, and even that I can't seem to find anywhere else)