MP3 Player Shoppers Guide

An anonymous reader writes "Says this three-part rundown of the latest DAPs "When Sony execs crowed a few weeks ago that their latest MP3 players were THE iPod Killers one thing was obvious. They were oblivious to the fact that the term "iPod Killer" had already gone from clever market-speak to running joke." Still, quite a few neat players here and I bet most don't scratch up as bad as iPods do."

Comments

Re:Vorbis Support

[Anonymous Coward]

http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/PortablePlayers

one they missed

[Eil]

I noticed that iRiver's line of MP3 players is (mostly) absent from this listing.

I recently got an iRiver IFP-899 and absolutely love it. I don't have any particularly overwhelming urge to store my entire music collection on a portable MP3 player, so a very expensive iPod or any of its very expensive clones are pretty much overkill for me.

Simply put, the iRiver is a great middle-of-the-road MP3 player. Rather than copying and pasting the specs from the corporate web page, I'll just list a few things that I particularly like about it.

• It's very small
  
• Receives FM radio
  
• Can record from the built-in mic, the line-in jack, or the FM radio (sheduled too, if you like)
  
• Plays MPEG 1/2/2.5 Layer 3, WMA, ASF, OGG
  
• Built-in EQ
  
• Some Linux support
  
• Can be connected as a USB mass storage device (with a firmware upgrade)
  
• Runs for 40 hours on a single AA battery
  
• 4-line backlit LCD

With prices on the unit dropping to almost $150, even Apple would have a hard time beating that. At $50 more, the iPod nano has double the storage but still only half the features.

Re:It's iTunes

[TheRaven64]

You don't need a license from Apple to support AAC. Philips used to with some of their players (I was going to get one until Apple added AAC support to iTunes and the iPod). You do need a license from the MPEG-LA and / or Dolby, however.

Note that if you do this, you will still not be able to play tracks bought from the iTunes music store, although nothing is stopping users using HYMN to remove Apple's DRM.

Re:Ogg on iRiver

[fizze]

Also noteworthy, listening to ogg vorbis files on my iRiver H320 does chow up battery faster than listening to mp3 files.