Looking for an mp3 player?

Have you been getting bored of listening to a lot of nothing on bus rides, in the train or a plane? I thought I'd make a small post about mp3 players since the market is kind of going through an upheaval right now.

Well, there are three kinds of mp3 players. First you have to decide how big a player you want, then you decide on the size, which is largely dictated by the size of your wallet.

There's large, which have 1.8" hard drives and lots of storage. Zune, iPod, iRiver H10 etc all fall in under this category. You'll find players up to a max of 80GB here. These are the most expensive.

There's medium, which have flash or microdrives and are smaller than the hard drive-based players. This includes the iPod nano, Creative Zen Micro Photo, Sandisk sansa e2x0 series etc. You'll find players up to 8-10GB here. (The Sandisk e280 with a 2GB microSD card will give you 10GB). These players have some overlap - you can get a 8GB nano for the same price as a 30GB iPod video for example.

Then there's small, which uses flash but doesn't have a lot of it. All players have a screen, except the super-tiny iPod shuffle, which doesn't. You'll find players up to a max of 4GB here. Most players are in the 1GB and 2GB capacity. These are mostly cheap. The most expensive is probably the iPod shuffle (surprise!) - you can mostly get a 2GB player with a screen for the price of a Shuffle.

There also used to be an Extra-large category, with 2.5" drives, but I don't think they make those anymore.

I just bought a Sandisk sansa e260 4GB for $99 (pictured above), which beats the snot out of any iPod nano. I could go out and buy a 2GB microSD today and turn it into a 6GB player. But any justification for the sansa brings me to my next point:

With any mp3 player other than the iPod, you will have people looking down on you because you "couldn't afford" an iPod. The iPod is the be-all, end-all of mp3 players today, like it or not. Its like buying an Aiwa cassette player because you couldn't afford a Sony Walkman (lol child of the 80's). Or buying an Acura because you couldn't afford a BMW. People don't care about features or anything, they just see "not iPod" and automatically assume you couldn't afford "the best." (read: the most expensive)

Well, I hope this post helped if anyone was looking at mp3 players. Back to your regularly scheduled commentary tomorrow!