20 May 2005 21:43 pm
There are two types of MP3 players these days – hard drive based players and flash memory based players. Almost everyone seems to opt for hard drive based players because “they are better.” However that view is subject – I just ordered a new MP3 player and I went for flash memory. Why? Because I think flash memory is better.
The first factor of course is size – storage size. Hard drive based players hold 20 GB or more of data where as flash memory drives generally hold less than 1 GB. You have to remember though that hard drive based players are bigger, so if flash memory players were the same size, they would have much more storage.
The fact is they aren’t though, so hard drive based players store more tracks. That is where it ends for the hard drive based players though. I mean what else is there? Compare this to flash based players.
Advantage one, way smaller. Flash based players are not much bigger than a match box, the length of them is usually dictated by the length of the battery they are using. Hard drive based players are bigger and chunkier.
This makes them great for active lifestyles. Which leads us on to the lack of moving parts. I don’t care what the manufacturers tell us, hard drive based players have moving parts and therefore they can skip and they can jam – it is possible so don’t let them tell you it isn’t. Flash memory players have no such problem.
There is also price to take into account. They are like half the price, a third of the price. You can pick up a top of the range flash memory player for less than the price of a budget hard drive based player.
So my point of view is this: if you have a huge music collection, you only listen to your MP3 player when sitting around and you only listen to it for short periods with plenty of time to re-charge your batteries at nights then do go for a hard drive based player. But if not, then give a flash memory player some serious thought.
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