A Closer Look At MP3 Players

By David Morris

Time to release your music on an MP3 player which are also known as MP4 players. The clever random mode on an MP3 player shuffles up your songs, playing them randomly. You can also store all your songs on a player small enough to fit in your pocket. But where does your MP3 player hold all your music?

The first iPods, which made MP3 players popular worldwide, had inbuilt hard drive to store music. Hard drives give an MP3 player lots of memory to store files. For example both Apple and Archos have MP3 players with hard drives that have 160GB capacity. MP3 players that use hard drives are much heavier, more bulky and also use more energy than those that don't.

Newer MP3 players use flash memory, in fact almost all MP3 players made now are fitted with internal flash memory. They can often hold an additional SD memory card to increase the overall player storage capacity.

Both manufactures and consumers have found benefits with flash memory based MP3 players. As a flash memory chip is very small compared to a hard drive, it means that manufactures can create very small MP3 players. Flash memory also uses considerably less energy, and so there are big improvements in battery life.

While flash memory is popular, there are some drawbacks. Flash memory has much more limited storage, usually between 8GB to 16GB, when compared to hard drive, especially when compared to the 160GB models from Apple and Archos. It can also be expensive to purchase additional memory cards to add to the player.

There's more to an MP3 player than just music. Almost all MP3 players now come with a color display in a range of different sizes. The smallest are usually 1.8 inch and they can be as big as 4.3 inch or 5 inch. This has transformed MP3 players into videos players too. While watching full length movies on 1.8 inch screen may not be practical, it's still fun to watch short video clips or music videos. The larger screen MP3 players can come with 16:9 ratio screen, and it's a perfect way to watch movie. - 30404

About the Author:

Sign Up for our Free Newsletter

Enter email address here