iTechnoBuzz!!

Well Here Are 10 MP-3 Players, well there are many consumer mp3 players present in the market, but this comparison is of the players where cost matters. These could be the players that you need for short term purposes. These don’t offer huge memory’s , but of course quality is there for sure.

Budget MP3 players market can be divided into three categories. First up we have “Ultra-Cheap”—simple devices that don’t offer much additional functionality beyond basic music playback. These players typically cost well under $100 and make good choices for music lovers on a budget, or anyone who fears losing an expensive device to a treadmill or, worse, the cold, hard pavement. Compact and portable, at this price they’re also easily replaceable. Players like the screenless Apple iPod shuffle and the cute SanDisk Sansa Fuze are top picks.

Apple iPod shuffle (1GB)
The second-generation iPod shuffle is impressively small, and the built-in clip makes it ideal for working out, running, or just casual listening. Its lack of a screen or any extras like an FM tuner—or even support for many iPod accessories—is countered by its impressively diminutive size and low price.

Archos 105
The Archos 105 is an honest-to-goodness MP3 player that plays only MP3s and WMAs for audio. There’s nothing wrong with this, per se. After all, there’s a large contingent of non-iTunes music fans whose music libraries consist primarily of those two file types. And the 105 definitely has one thing going for it: It’s super-cheap for a 2GB player.

Creative ZEN Mozaic (2GB)
The Creative ZEN Mozaic is the latest example of Creative’s long-standing tradition of developing good-looking budget portable media players. The Mozaic comes in 2GB ($59.99 direct), 4GB ($79.99), and 8GB ($119.99) capacities, and its control pad, as its name would suggest, looks a lot like a tile mosaic.

Creative ZEN Stone Plus
The ZEN Stone Plus, at 2GB, has twice the storage of the original ZEN Stone, a screen, an FM radio, and voice recording.

iriver Lplayer
A worthy follow-up to the venerable clix, this iPod nano–esque player is a viable alternative for those not tied to iTunes.

Microsoft Zune (4GB)
The first flash-based Zune is a good-looking, easy-to-navigate device that can be synced with your PC wirelessly, but its small screen and jumpy interface are no match for Apple’s superior iPod nano.

Samsung YP-S2 “The Pebble”
A screenless, diminutive MP3 player, the S2 has 1GB of flash memory and some other laudable features, including a button for editing playlists on the go and gym-friendly earbuds.

Samsung YP-S3
The slim, cell-phone-like design is sure to appeal to fashionable folks who aren’t tied to iTunes. And what’s better, you get 4GB of flash memory for only $100.

SanDisk Sansa Fuze
The Sansa Fuze isn’t particularly innovative—it’s just another simple yet solid portable media player from SanDisk.

SanDisk Sansa View ( 8GB)
SanDisk has made a no-frills, high-capacity flash player with a quality screen, memory-expansion capabilities, and that all-important feature: a low price.

The best MP3 players, of all shapes, sizes, capacities and prices.

In early 1998, Creative launched its first ever MP3 player. The Creative Nomad was a re-badged version of the Samsung Yepp YP-D40, and it had a colossal 64MB of internal memory.

Over ten years later, the biggest Apple iPod has a capacity 2,500 times larger – 160GB. The great thing about MP3 players today, is that there’s something for everybody.

You can buy a 1GB Trekstor iBeat for less than £30. You can spend £320 on a 32GB super touchscreen iPod touch. Or you could buy any one of a thousand different players at price points between the two.

Here’s our list of the top 10 MP3 players on the market today. All price points, all capacities and all sizes catered for nicely.

Creative Zen Stone 1GB – 4GB

We’re so accustomed to Apple dominating the MP3 player market these days, that it’s difficult for other players to make an impact.

However, with its 2GB of space and neat array of colours, the Creative Zen Stone is pretty neat.

It sits in the palm of your hand and weighs next to nothing. With clear and easy controls you can find your favourite tunes or simply choose to shuffle your songs randomly. Simply plug into your laptop and you can drag and drop files to it.

The sound quality is impressive, but even better is the remarkable battery life, as we managed to get well over 10 hours from a single charge.

SanDisk Sansa Clip 1GB – 4GB

This Flash-based MP3 player is pitched as a rival for the iPod Shuffle or the Creative Zen Stone, but manages to have a style all its own.

Measuring 56 x 36 x 13mm, it incorporates a 25mm screen that is far more usable than on the Zen Stone. The controls are simple, but it’s the addition of a Home button that really stands out, taking you back to the start menu.

It gets its name from the clip on the back, so you can attach it to the collar of your coat.

Apple iPod Shuffle 1GB – 2GB

Of all the iPods in the 2007 range, the one that changed the least is the iPod shuffle; compared to its predecessor, it costs the same and offers the same capacity.

Compared to the Creative Zen Stone and the SanDisk Sansa Clip, the Shuffle really doesn’t offer much as a low-end player. The other two both offer a screen, and larger capacities for a better price.

The Shuffle is the obvious choice for anyone wanting tight integration with iTunes, but really, the Zen and the Sansa are far better options here.

Creative ZEN 4GB – 32GB

While the world is obsessing over Apple’s new iPod touch, let’s not forget about all the other cool MP3 players out there.

You know, the ones that aren’t locked down to proprietary file formats and limited to use with only one PC or Mac (ahem).

Like this one for instance. The new Zen. It’s the new MP3 player from industry veteran Creative, and it’s pretty cool too.

Let’s get one thing cleared away right from the start: this is no iPod touch competitor. It’s a flash player but it’s designed to be compact and it’s also £170 cheaper than the touch.

At the time of publication, the 4GB model was available online for under £70.

SanDisk Sansa Fuze 4GB – 8GB

We loved the original Sansa, it was the office darling in a world filled with more showy Apple products. It did what it did without fussin’ or fghtin’ and did it well.

It could play a multitude of formats and record clearly on the fly. For a good year, all the press briefings we attended were recorded on our wee Sansas.

The Sansa Fuze is an updated version of the older models; the family resemblance is definitely there but the refinement is just as evident. It’s a very functional little player, and the sound quality is absolutely fantastic.

Apple iPod nano 4GB – 8GB

You’ll not find a speck of plastic on the new nano; it’s got a matt-finish aluminium top surface, and the now-classical stainless steal back plate underneath.

So the first thing you notice when you pick it up is that it has a size-defying solid feel to it.
Surprising for a 6.5mm thick (thin) device that weighs less than 50g, wouldn’t you say?

The second thing that will strike you when you get the iPod nano out the box is that it almost seems like it’s the ‘wrong shape’. At 69 x 52mm it’s almost square – not what we’re used to from an iPod.

It’s a great MP3 player – it looks and sounds fantastic – but the price might put some people off.

Sony Walkman NWZ-A829 16GB

Sony is moving on. It long ago conceded defeat in an unpopular war against Apple’s iPod – a war Sony lost

because it adhered to a silly proprietary format (ATRAC), listened too hard to the needs of its music and movie stablemates instead of its customers, and served up lukewarm chow when it should have been changing the world. This much we know.

The 2008 NW-A829 Walkman we have in our hands is an evolutionary step up from last year’s NW-A800.

It pretty much boasts the same user interface, same wide compatibility with different music formats (from protected WMA to unprotected AAC) and plays back MPEG-4/H.264 video just like an iPod does.

What marks out the NW-A829 from its predecessor then is Bluetooth connectivity.

Creative Zen X-Fi 8GB – 32GB

The Creative Zen X-Fi is essentially the same size as Creative’s last flagship MP3 player, the Creative ZEN.

The semi-clunky interface is also pretty much identical. But there the similarities end.

Because while the Creative ZEN was a solid performer, it lacks a distinguishing feature. The Zen X-Fi, on the other hand, has four secret weapons.

The first is the aforementioned X-Fi audio processor, for superior sound quality. The second is a startlingly good Wireless LAN Wi-Fi function which allows you to wirelessly stream and download music from a web server, a PC on your home network as well as to and from other Zen X-Fi players.

The third is an internal speaker which makes the one on the Apple iPhone sound fairly pedestrian. And finally, the fourth is a pair of high-quality Creative Zen earphones which come as standard.

Apple iPod touch

The original criticisms of the iPod touch were that it wasn’t available in sizes over 16GB.

But now that Apple has introduced a new 32GB iPod touch, removing most people’s main objection to the original player in one blow.

In iPod mode this player is sublime. Cover Flow makes total sense on the touch’s large 3.5-inch screen, and rooting through your list of artists by flicking your finger on the screen makes it easier than ever to find what you’re looking for.

As a video playing device it scores highly again. This is the simply the most elegant and stylish MP3 player ever built. It may not have the best sound quality. And it might not be small enough to fit comfortably into all pockets. And the screen my get very greasy. But still, this is sexy as hell.

Apple iPod classic 80GB – 160GB

With the entry-level capacity now 80Gb, and the top end a seemingly impossible 160Gb (more than most new laptops), it’s – in a funny sort of way – the most practical video device around.

The need to prepare for a journey by whittling terabytes of video down to just 20 or 30Gb of what you might fancy watching is gone entirely. With 160Gb, you’re sorted for every occasion and relived of the irritations of constantly deleting and uploading.

True, the Archos 605 comes in 160Gb at the top-end too, but it’s a much larger and pricier device. The widescreen shape of the also new iPod Touch may make it appear a better bet as a video player than this, but the screen resolution’s little better and a maximum capacity of 16Gb places ridiculous restrictions on your options.

Yes, the screen’s very small, but four generations of colour LCD down the line for the iPod range and it’s become quite a beauty. The display is brighter and clearer than many rivals with four times the pixel count.

Looks like Dell is going to make another run at the music player business. All I can say is “here we go again.” Perhaps you’ll remember its ill-fated attempt to compete with Apple’s iPod. It lasted all of three years.

What’s different this time around? Well last year Dell acquired a little music software outfit called Zing which in 2006 was demonstrating a concept design that essentially put Wi-Fi streaming inside a portable player, thus giving it the ability to, among other things, play Sirius streams.
Sound familiar? Well yeah, actually. My very favorite thing to do with the iPod touch is to listen to streams from Pandora and Last.fm. Okay, Sirius and XM aren’t on the iTunes App Store, but if they know what’s good for them, they’ll offer their subscribers who like to listen via the Web (ahem) an iPhone/iPod touch application that will work via Wi-Fi and/or 3G, but I digress.

Dell’s player might include streaming capabilities, and could also work with Rhapsody, which isn’t a bad service at all, or it might launch its own music service. And hey, if it supports MP3 music files, as it presumably would, it would support music sold on Rhapsody, Amazon, eMusic and whoever else has decided to go the MP3 route. The problem, will of course, come down to marketing and positioning aganst Apple, and we all know how that tends to work out. Its closest rival in the U.S. is SanDisk, which has a market share of about 11%, though it has tended to be a profitable share profitable share.

Or as CNet’s Jim Kerstetter says, this could all be a trial balloon meant to test market potential. It’s not like Dell doesn’t have enough on its plate, though CEO Michael Dell is promising a “big second half” of the year. A music player won’t get Dell there, that much is certain.