Alternatives to the Apple Ipod
The Creative Labs NOMAD Jukebox Zed Ultra MP3 Player is a great MP3 Player for it’s price. At 40 GB it is only listed at 220.00 on average. I especially like this one, because it can support all of the extensions the other MP3 Players hold. It uses a Blue Backlit LCD screen, which could of been a little better, but for the price who could complain? When the MP3 Player is idle, is does use a Screen Saver feature with different effects which is pretty cool. The playback can last up to 14 hours, which is 2 hours shorter than the Dell, but still is strong for it’s price. The NOMAD Zed is probably one of the best MP3 Players out there for the short dollar.
Many MP3 Players are releasing mini players, with a wide variety of colors to go along with it. This was big with Ipod and still is, until every other company started doing this. Now the competition is much more fierce. Of course the size of the mini players are much smaller, but are more compact compared to a larger one. Most of the players range from 128 MB to 5 GB for a smaller MP3 Player. The Ipod mini would probably be your best bet in a mini player, or the Creative brand.
We move on to the IRiver which is a very very small MP3 Player, that doesn’t hold too much information. Anyone looking for a very small and compact player would definitely need to go with this. It can handle up to 1GB of memory, and is great for people on the go, mainly running, and working out. Of course we are talking about the 1.4 Ounce one, and not the much bigger I River. The good thing about this player is that it can handle up to 40 hours of playback on 1 AA battery which is sweet. The much larger I River has a hard drive size of up to 20 GB, and can handle about half of that playback time. Another nice feature is that it is colored, so that makes a big difference. The Price of the mini River is bewteen 90.00 and 150.00, which is very cheap. The larger I River is about 260.00.
The Samsung is another good buy, as it features a colored screen with an image viewer. It is very thin at 0.7 “, and is about 7 ounces. Although that is not the lightest player, it can handle a lot of songs, and can last about 10 hours. Not the best in playback, but it works. This players best feature is that it can handle different sound effects. SRS WOW is a big change in sound on the Windows Media Player mostly, and is available on the Samsung MP3 Player. Overall I would recommend probably something a little better for the money, but it still is a decent player. If you are going for thinness, this is a good buy.
The Rio Brand MP3 Player has been around for a long time, but just doesn’t have the memory power, the other competition has, so why is it any good? Well for the money it is a good MP3 Player for those who don’t really need that many songs on there player. The size is not that big, especially the Rio Sport Player. Anyone going for a run or work out, would like this system. Being a close competition to the I River, it is a close battle. They are almost the same size, and share a pretty close price range. Rio has been around a little longer, so the edge would have to go to them, but for overall ability to perform the I River would lead the battle. The look of the Rio is much cooler though. The price range is between 80 and 150 dollars.
Now we move on to the main course, the Apple Ipod. This is probably the top MP3 Player to buy, but it is kind of overrated. Many people think of the top brand to be the best of them all, which is not always true. The Ipod was overly hyped because of it’s ability to hold more than a thousand songs. When other players decided to even the competition out, they started expanding there hard drives to compete against the Ipod. While the player looks a lot like something out of an alien movie, they have a lot of cool features. There are many different Ipod MP3 Players as well, with the normal sized player, the mini, and the shuffle for the easy minded song listener. Not only does the Ipod have different sizes, but they have bigger hard drives then all of the competition with there 60 GB hard drive, colored display, and image viewing capabilities. They are pretty heavy at over 7 ounces, but with all the information they hold, how can’t they be? Overall the Ipod is the best in MP3 Players, but expect to pay for it. Ipods generally range from 100 to 400 dollars, which is expensive for a player. They do hold the most information though, when it comes to songs.
