Review: MP3 Players
Dec. 13, 2000 -- If you want to give the gift of music this holiday, and ring in the New Year with some rocking new gear, tiny MP3 players with a giant sound might be the way to go.
Digital audio technology, which has all but supplanted its analog cousins in the past two decades, has also shrunk the tunes and devices they play on enough to make the 21-year-old Sony Walkman look gargantuan. CDs, as their name suggests, are somewhat compact. And though they’re still hot, there is a slow but steady movement among the technophilia toward the even smaller, perhaps cooler MP3 format.
MP3s are small computer files with near CD-quality sound. They’re recorded very similarly to the way compact discs are, but they take advantage of what the ear can’t hear to reduce the amount of data to reproduce the audio.
Diamond Multimedia put the first MP3 player on the scene in 1998 with its pager-sized Rio. Fast-forward to December 2000, and there’s an entire battery of players lining the shelves, ready for your listening pleasure. They are becoming a hit because they combine portability with customization — you can create a sort of digital “mix tape” and add information about each song that will pop up in the unit’s display.
We’ve gotten our hands on about a dozen of these gadgets, cranked up the tunes and assembled an unscientific review that should help you find the model that’s right for you.
Some Sound Advice
When shopping for MP3 players, there are several things to keep in mind: How much do I want to spend? (Players range from about $169 to about $500.)
How much music does it store? (More memory means more music.)
How easy is it to use? (If you need to scour the manual, forget it.)
How much weight and bulk am I willing to carry? You should also consider how new your computer is at home, and when shopping for a player, be sure to check that the unit will work with your Mac or Windows 95 machine. (You might just need to upgrade your PC to enter the world of MP3.)
Since MP3s are not on any music store racks (yet), all of these devices require at least a bit of techie elbow grease to use. There are basically three ways at the moment to score MP3 files: You can download them from Web sites, “rip” them from a compact disc, or swap them with other users.
The easy, if controversial, way is to find MP3s online. There are a variety of sites that offer music in the MP3 format. (This may or may not be legal, as lawyers on both sides of the issue are still waging battles in the nation’s courts. However, if you already own a tune on CD, it’s a good bet snagging one via the Net can’t get you in trouble.) Some Web sites are free, some are fee-based; the controversial and beleagured Napster is a currently free online swap shop where you can search listings of songs available from other users’ computers.
The more involved way to get a hold of MP3s is to “rip” them off a CD. Downloading a software program called a ripper lets you record an MP3 from a compact disc. Depending on which one you use, this can be as simple as installing the software and popping in a CD. Some programs offer expanded features. (See sidebar below.)
Generally much smaller than most CD players, MP3 devices store digital music files into removable or internal memory. These include: internal microdrives and Flash memory; postage-stamp sized Memory cards, slightly larger CompactFlash cards, Sony MemorySticks and Iomega Clik! drives. One advantage these memory types have over CDs is they are solid-state, meaning they have no moving parts.
Now, we’ll look at some specifics.
Meet the Players
Creative Labs Nomad JukeBoxAt $499 a pop, this little machine ought to deliver a lot of goods. And for the most part, it does. The most expensive unit tested, the Nomad JukeBox rates high in terms of sound, design, features and capacity — especially capacity. If you need a lot of music to roam about with, the Nomad can handle 6 gigabytes of data, letting you store 100 hours of music on it. That translates to about 80 CDs. (Try taking those with you on the subway or even on a road trip!) Another plus is the excellent set of headphones that comes with the box. Weighing in at just about a pound, though — with batteries and those headphones — its overall bulk and short, four-hour battery-life dampen the experience a bit. A power and cassette adapter for the car would be welcome accessories.
Sony Network Walkman NW-E3Sony MD MZ-R70Electronics powerhouse Sony has a whole slew of digital music offerings, and each usually looks as pretty as it sounds. We tested out two devices that offer a different take on the MP3 genre. New to the market this quarter, the company’s sleekly designed Network Walkman NW-E3 is the lightest and smallest device of the batch tested — it can easily slip into your pocket. At $379.95, it’s a bit on the expensive side, but it sounds good and holds about two hours worth of music. If you want to look cool, this could be the player for you. True to Sony form, it will only accept MP3s ripped with the company’s proprietary Open MG Jukebox.
Actually a MiniDisc player/recorder that accepts MP3s, Sony’s $279, “jacket-size” MD Walkman MZ-R70 has very good sound. Though not quite SACD or DVD audio quality (see related stories in column at right), the MiniDisc format is closer to CD-quality than MP3. A good choice for an audiophile, the device can be a complement to a good stereo system. You can reorder tunes, label tracks with its titler from the unit or the remote control that comes with it. You can also adjust the recording levels manually. Unfortunately, it records in real-time so 60 minutes of audio will take an hour to load.
SSI Corporation Neo 25If you’re an avid MP3 fan, as in your friends call you a junkie, the Neo 25 might be for you. At $429, the device is actually a souped-up hard drive that can play MP3s. This gives it a couple of cool advantages. Because it’s actually a hard drive, you can use it to carry around any type of file, from video and pictures to word documents and e-mail. To load files to it, you just attach it to your computer with a USB cable, select the files you want to transfer, and simply drag and drop them on its hard-drive icon. It’s not the prettiest one on the shelves, but it comes with an eye-catching infrared remote control. The sound is good, and at $0.07 per megabyte of storage, this is a good value unit. There are also models that come with a 12 and 20 gigabyte hard drive.
Digisette Duo-AriaThis machine looks familiar, but Digisette’s Duo-Aria is slimmer than its cassette twin and does a lot more. And it’s definitely a different breed from its MP3-player siblings in more than just looks. It unfortunately uses a fairly slow parallel port interface, and with a 32-megabyte capacity it won’t hold all that much music, but it is perfectly fine for books on tape or other spoken-word audio. (It holds about six hours of music compared to 10 hours of talk, and both sound good.) Thanks to an internal digital-to-analog converter, this little machine has the advantage of making almost any analog tape deck into a digital player. (Apparently, the company has found one rogue deck that wouldn’t play it.) A bigger, 64-megabyte unit is due out next year, according to a Digisette rep, as is a Mac version.
I2Go’s eGoSensory Science Rave: MP2200 This powerful player sits near the top of the group in price, but is a very good value in terms of features, music capacity, sound, and versatility. Designed to sound good in a car, I2Go’s eGo, which uses an IBM MicroDrive, is also easy to carry and includes a voice recorder. Sensory Science’s Rave: MP2200 is a very good unit across the board. It come with one of the best transfer programs of any player we tested, and it has an FM tuner in its feature-rich lineup, which includes a voice recorder, an address book and a personal memo book. It comes with 64 megabytes and is expandable up to 128 megs with SmartMedia cards. Weighing slightly more than 2 1/2 ounces, this lightweight player with a moderate $199 price tag gives the MP2200 a good bang for the buck.
InnoGear’s MiniJamIf you have a Handspring Visor palmtop and find it indispensable, InnoGear’s MiniJam is an attachment worth getting. The Visor add-on offers surprisingly good sound, and two slots for memory cards also provide extra storage for the Visor. A moderate $199 will get you a mere 32 megs of memory, while a slightly steeper $259 will double that to 64 megs. However, it’s a pretty expensive choice if you have to add the cost of the Visor ($449). A $40 speed loader is a must accessory to compensate for the painfully slow file transfer times (even with the Visor’s USB cradle).
Iomega HipZip Sensory Science Rave: 2300
Iomega’s HipZip and Sensory Science’s Rave: 2300 are very intuitive if slightly heavy players. With only 40 minutes of music playtime before you have to swap out a disk it’s disappointing to realize that you can’t even load a whole CD onto one. In terms of cost per song, though, they both provide better values than their Flash memory counterparts, but they’re a far cry from the value of the hard-drive based players.