I was on the lookout for an mp3 player that would keep me entertained during my journey to office and had enough capacity so that I would not need to change the songs every 2 days. Ideally I wanted a player that had FM and voice recording also as add-on features even though I hardly tend to use them! Along with size, battery life was a consideration as I wanted rechargeable li-ion batteries instead of AAA batteries. The final factor was of-course the cost and value for money the player offered in terms of souKeeping this in mind I had zeroed in on the Apple I-Pod Shuffle (1 GB), Transcend T-Sonic 610 (1 GB), Apple I-Pod Mini (4 GB) and the Creative Zen Micro (5 GB) . (Yes, I agree the range of pieces really differ in terms of prices as well as capacity, but I had not made up my mind as yet!)
Among these pieces the I-Pod deserves no introduction as it is widely claimed to be the best mp3 player you can get your hands on both in terms of sheer style and sound clarity. The Creative Zen Micro is one of the players which not many people might have heard of or listened to. In Creative had launched this as a direct competitor to the I-Pod mini with a vertical touch pad for scrolling and a catchy tag line of ’’No more going around in circles’’ aimed at the Mini! It boasts of an S/N (Signal to Noise ratio) of 98 Db which it claims to be the best in the market. (never heard it myself though). It is also feature rich in terms of FM, FM recording and voice recording.
After having a look at the mp3 players, I eliminated the I-Pod shuffle because of a lack of display. (When you have almost 1 gb of songs you cant tend to remember which ones you have!). The Mini got rejected because even though it had a display, it didnt have any other features like FM or voice recording. Also it was pretty steeply priced at Rs. 9000 which I think is a bit too much for a pure mp3 player. Its a bit big weighing about a 100 gms. The Creative would have been a good buy, except for its size and price. (If you have easy access to a PC, a 1 GB player is actually more than enough as it can hold about 250 songs which can keep you entertained for atleast a week assuming you use it about 2 hours a day. Thats why it makes more sense to go for a 1 GB player which is much more compact than a 5 GB one since the former are usually flash based whereas the latter are hard disk based).
So the last player standing was the Transcend T-Sonic 610 . The player is really small measuring just 7cm(L) x 3.5cm(W) x 1.5cm(H) and weighs just 28 grams including the Li-Ion battery. It supports mp3 as well as wma formats. It has a lot of features that even the hyped I-Pods dont have like FM, FM recording and voice recording. It has a beautiful and bright 1 inch OLED display which shows information of the current playing track, track length, volume and battery left. It has a rechargeable Li-Ion battery which charges when connected to a USB port of a computer and takes about 3 hours for a complete charge which lasts for about 16 hours of constant play.
It supports true plug and play which means you will never have to install drivers in any PC to transfer stuff. Its like a pen drive which gets automatically detected whenever it is connected to any PC! Transferring files is as easy as dragging files to the detected removable drive. The sound clarity of the piece is also very commendable given its size and price! I would say the clarity of the player is about 90% of that of the I-Pod. The FM is very clear if the reception in your area is good and the recorder is also strong enough to record quite clearly.
The player comes along with a good pair of earphones, a pouch, a sports arm band, a neck strap, a hand strap, a usb cable, a mini usb connector and 2 years warranty! All in all this is a highly recommended mp3 player considering the the price and the features it offers.
nd clarity and features.