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MP3 players - Which Reports in assocation with Tiscali

Reports from Which?
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WHICH? REVIEWS: MP3 players

Our Best Buy MP3 players sound great and are easy to use.

There are 2 types of MP3 players - hard disk and solid state.

Larger-capacity players use a hard disk for storage, like a PC does. They tend to be bulkier than solid-state players, but you can fit more music on to them.

Solid-state players get their name because they have no moving parts. This means the players can be incredibly small and light, but in many cases you can't store a huge number of songs on them.

To work out the storage capacity of your player - a typical pop track recorded at a decent quality uses about 4.5MB of memory.

You can find out our Best Buy recommendations by taking out a trial to www.which.co.uk. Below, we explain more about the features of MP3 players.

Music formats

Digital music is available in different formats, MP3 is simply the best known and most flexible. You can play MP3 files on most players and copy them as many times as you like. There are no copying restrictions on MP3 files, and most players support the format. For that reason, MP3 is hated by the music industry which is trying to combat piracy by promoting more restrictive formats. Other formats include:

AAC - a file format used by Apple, and ATRAC3 is Sony's format.
WMA - a Microsoft format, compatible with Windows Media Player and is becoming increasingly widespread. WAV is the default format for audio files on Windows PCs.
Flac and Ogg - 30 open source formats.

Take care when you buy music from an online retailer, all players don't play all formats. For example, an iPod won't be able to play music from the Sony Connect site in Atrac3 format.

Battery life

Most models come with rechargeable batteries, which means you don't have to keep shelling out on replacements when they run out.

Solid state players typically last longer, providing on average just over 21 hours of play time per charge. Larger memory hard disc players last for an average of around 16.5 hours.

Charging takes on average 3 hours, but some of the players with larger memory capacity can take 4+ hours. With most models, you can recharge the batteries without removing them.

Connections

You connect your MP3 player to a computer via either a USB or a FireWire connection.

A FireWire connection will transfer music at about twice the speed of a standard USB connection. However most new players are supplied with the newer USB 2.0 standard, which is almost the same speed as FireWire.

So what's the best MP3 player for you? By taking out a trial to www.which.co.uk you can discover all you need to know about MP3 players and find out our Best Buy recommendations.