MP3 Players, An Introduction

Set your music free with a new digital audio player, or MP3 player, as they are commonly known. With an MP3 player it is easy to shuffle your songs in any order and you can hold your entire music collection the palm of your hand. But where is your music actually stored?

The first iPods, which made MP3 players popular worldwide, had inbuilt hard drive to store music. Hard drives give an MP3 player lots of memory to store files. For example both Apple and Archos have MP3 players with hard drives that have 160GB capacity. MP3 players that use hard drives are much heavier, more bulky and also use more energy than those that don't.

More recently MP3 player manufactures have started using flash memory to replace mini hard drives. There are now very few MP3 players that use hard drives. Instead they have an inbuilt flash memory chip and often have a slot to hold a second flash memory card, thereby increasing the player's memory.

Both manufactures and consumers have found benefits with flash memory based MP3 players. As a flash memory chip is very small compared to a hard drive, it means that manufactures can create very small MP3 players. Flash memory also uses considerably less energy, and so there are big improvements in battery life.

Flash memory does have some disadvantages though. The storage capacity is significantly smaller than a hard drive, typically between 8GB - 16GB. The price for additional SD cards can be expensive.

MP3 players can do more than just play music. Most of them have LCD color displays ranging from a very small 1.8 inch to much larger 4.3 inch or 5 inch,. ONDA and Archos even produce MP3 players that have a 7 inch screen. This has changed the scope of MP3 players from just listing to music, to being able to watch videos too. While watching feature film on small screen may be a strain on the eyes, the larger screens are ideal.

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Learn more about MP4 players. Stop by David Morris's site where you can find out all about anMP4 player and what it can do for you.

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