What to Look For in a Used MP3 Player
Cassette Tapes and CD’s have all but given up the ghost on the portable music players market. The MP3 player is now the king of the roost when it comes to music. MP3 players offer fully digital music that is stored on an internal hard drive in a compression format labeled as an MP3. At this moment MP3 players are the top selling consumer electronics device that the market has ever seen. This is due to the great sound quality and the convenience of it’s small size. The songs can be arranged into playlists that make it easy to keep your music organized.
The one thing that makes the MP3 player so popular is that you can find them in just about any size and loaded with extra features. MP3 player storage capacities weigh in from 512 megs (120 songs) to about 250 gigs (56,000 songs). The different prices will be determined by storage space and features you require.
A fairly recent feature that is hugely popular now is the ability to watch movies and view pictures. This is a big determination for MP3 purchasers recently. How convenient is it to be able to watch a movie while taking a long car ride or waiting on your name to be called in an appointment type setting. And now you don’t have to take up space in your wallet or purse with family pictures, you can store hundreds of them on your MP3 player.
A fairly recent feature that has been added to current MP3 players on the market is a built in FM Tuner. Now when, if you ever get tired of listening to the songs that you have stored on your MP3 player, you can switch over and listen to your favorite radio station.
A new digital audio player that has recently come online and is quickly rising in ranks is the combination MP3-MP4 player. The new MP4 format is similar in size to the MP3 format but provides a superior sound quality. The prices of the combo players are very expensive compared to the MP3 players because of there newness, but look for the prices to come down as new companies enter this market.
An item that we are seeing hugely popular now is the combination cell phone music player. You can easily load songs onto your cell phone via your PC or straight to your phone with one of the many online music providers. Consumers are loving the fact that they no longer have to carry around two device, and can make phone calls and listen to music with one device. They have recently become a better seller than your regular MP3 player.
There are three major types of MP3 players that you will find.
1. MP3 players with a built in Flash hard drive. These are a great choice for the active types who like to listen to music while working out or playing sports. You will not have problems with your music skipping as your MP3 player gets shaken. Most of the newer music phones and iPod products are solid state players and come in 1 gigabyte to 32 gigabyte offerings.
2. Digital Music players with compact hard drives are jokingly called juke boxes because of there ability to store huge amounts of songs. Apple’s iPod classic comes in this group, but the drawback is since it has a hard drive that spins, they are subject to skipping when bumped. Juke boxes can be found in storage sizes up to a whopping 250 gig.
3. The 3rd major type and the oldest are the CD MP3 players. These are your Portable CD players that are capable of playing MP3 files off of common CD’s. They do not have any internal storage capabilities and are the least popular of all of the MP3 players.
The most popular companies at this time is the Apple iPod line and the Zune. iPods have a whopping 60% of the market share while Microsoft’s Zune line comes in at a not so close second. Other brands that have a solid sales line are Samsung, Phillips, SanDisk Sansa and Creative. Samsung leads the way in the cell phone music player combo market.
All of the major compression formats are supported by the many brands that has been mentioned here including, aac, MP3, aiff, wav and wma. Of course MP3 is by far the most popular format of all, and is supported by all MP3 players, hence the name. A format that is gaining ground is the quickly rising MP4 format, look for it to make a big jump in popularity soon.