When Apple brought out the first iPod, it cost several hundred euros and was basically a portable hard disk that happened to have a music player attached to it. It also only came with 5Gb of storage.
Nowadays, that much storage is available for far less money and, importantly, in a much smaller package. In this group test, we’ll be taking a look at six of the best portable music players around, all of which come in at €250 or less. That amount buys at least 2Gb of storage – some of our players have as much as 8Gb. As a rule of thumb, 1Gb provides space for about 250 songs.
While the first iPod contained an internal hard disk, many modern players, including the iPod Nano, use flash memory instead. This makes for a smaller and faster player, although it can be more expensive. We’ll look at both types of player, and see what the pros and cons are of each.
Apple iPod Nano
By far the best known of all portable music players, the Nano is the newest and smallest of the iPod family. As we were going to press, Apple announced a completely new, thinner version of the iPod Nano.
This one (RRP €209) provides 4Gb of storage space and the top half of the player is taken up with the screen, which is a little on the small side compared with some of the players in the test. That said, the screen is clear and fairly bright, and has been slightly improved in the new edition.
Unlike all the rest of the players in the group test, this one doesn’t come in black – that’s reserved for the 8Gb edition (RRP €259). The case is made from aluminium rather than plastic, which makes it more durable but gives it a slightly retrograde feel compared with its predecessor.
Apart from its size, the best thing about the iPod Nano is the ease with which music stored on it can be browsed and organised on the fly. All the players here use playlists, artists, albums and song titles to find music, but Apple is the only company to use a truly intuitive method to navigate it – the famous scroll wheel. None of the other players comes close, as far as ease of use goes. There’s also the ability, lacking in some players, to add tunes to a playlist while listening.
The Nano comes with Apple’s standard earbud headphones, which are not particularly good. It’s worth replacing these at the first opportunity, particularly as they have become a magnet for thieves.
The iTunes software is the only way to put music on the player, and the iPod can’t play downloaded music that’s protected with the Microsoft DRM, only music bought from Apple’s iTunes store and music copied from your own CDs, tapes and records.
There’s no sound recorder or radio, but it can show images, and has a calendar and to-do list, a few games and a stopwatch. No case is supplied, but plenty of third-party accessories are available.
Creative Zen V
Music players are getting smaller in all dimensions, and while none are as thin as Apple’s iPod nano, none in our test are as small overall as the Zen V (RRP €125). Volume levels are good with little clipping at high volumes. There is a record function, using the built-in microphone or the line-in socket on the top of the device. Quality from the microphone was not great, but it’s more than enough for recording a lecture, for instance.
The supplied Creative earbud headphones are of reasonable quality, but seeing as Creative makes several good models of earphone, we were surprised that a better quality pair was not included with the Zen V.
The Zen is only the size of a large biscuit, but it packs in 4Gb of memory. The display is medium sized and clear, with bright colours that make it easy to see what’s going on. The colour schemes can be changed using the onscreen menus. It uses the same playlist, artist, album and song navigation as the other players, but the joystick in the middle is used to physically navigate through the menus. It’s possible to add tunes to a playlist while others are being played, and there’s a clever DJ section in the menus which can randomly select tracks, play tracks that haven’t been heard recently, and help find music in a number of other ways.
The player can charge using the USB connection to a PC. A cloth carry case is supplied in the box. There’s no FM radio, but it does come with an organiser (calendar and to-do list) and the ability to view pictures (but not video). The screen’s quality is not great, but it’s satisfactory for this kind of image viewing.
Music can be transferred to the player using the Windows Media Player or just using the drag-and-drop feature of Windows. This means it’s not necessary to install the supplied software, although installing it does make things easier.
Iriver U10
The U10 (RRP €249) is the least orthodox music player in our round-up. Instead of having any buttons on the front panel, you push down on an edge of the large colour screen. This navigates the menus. In theory it’s a great, intuitive idea. However, the interface is a bit slow, so while on another player it might be a case of zooming through the menus, here it’s a matter of clicking and waiting. The delay is very small – generally less than a second – but it is irritating having to hang around waiting for the player to respond.
Uniquely among music players, the U10 can play Macromedia Flash files – in fact, the menus are made from Flash files – so it can play downloaded games. Some are included with the player, but other games need to be specially made for the U10 – it can’t just play any file. There are more details at the company’s website, including links to download sites.
The sluggish interface is a shame because otherwise, the interface is very good. It’s a clear and colourful screen, which means there’s no difficulty in navigation. The size of the display means that plenty of information can be shown on the screen at once. There are several extras, including an FM radio, picture, text and video viewer, and a recorder. The internal microphone makes very good recordings, which is just as well, because there’s no line input. There is, however, the ability to tilt the screen display through 90 degrees, so the player can be operated either vertically or horizontally, according to your preference. Sound quality was good, and although the player doesn’t go particularly loud, it’s enough, and there is no clipping at high volumes.
The supplied earbud headphones are very good quality, although the buds were a bit big for our ears, making them a little uncomfortable. The software supplied can be used to transfer files to the player, but this can also be done using Windows’ own built-in facilities. One qualm is that judicious use of the ‘hold’ function is required, otherwise it’s very easy to accidentally press against a side of the screen and find oneself listening to a different song.
MSI P640
MSI’s media players generally come in at the budget end, and this one certainly looks the part to begin with. There’s an excess of plastic packaging, whereas most manufacturers at this level have moved on to sleek cardboard cases. But the player itself (RRP €159) is much better than that, design-wise. It’s comfortable to hold, the display is clear and the buttons depress satisfyingly when clicked. The menus are intuitive and as simple as the design of the player. Though it lacks the chic of some of its rivals, the buttons were accessible by thumb with the player sat in the palm of the hand.
Music is transferred to the player using the supplied software, or by using the Windows interface. This made organising our music really quite easy – putting music on the player is a simple matter of selecting files and dropping them into the player window under My Computer.
The supplied earbud headphones are of a reasonable quality, although as with most of the headphones supplied with players in this test, it would definitely be worth replacing them with a better quality pair for sustained listening.
This is one of two hard-disk-based players in our tests. The 8Gb disk will store about 2,000 songs, but the downside is that the player is slightly larger than most. It’s not a big deal, however, because the P640 is about the size of the average mobile phone.
Sandisk Sansa E260
While nobody has come close to improving on the classic simplicity of Apple’s iPod navigation, Sandisk has got the closest to emulating it. Like all these players, the E260 (RRP €170) uses playlist-based navigation to find and play a piece of music. It has a wheel, which glows blue when in use, that is used to cycle through lists of music and options. This is the only player in our round-up – in fact, the only player we’ve seen – to successfully emulate Apple’s scroll-wheel approach. It does this quite well, making navigating through song lists fairly simple.
Annoyingly, there’s no way to create a playlist while playing other files. It’s possible to add files to the Go List but only while playing a song. So unless the music files on the PC are already arranged into playlists, it’ll mean listening to whole albums on the go. The other option is to go through each track in turn and select it, play it, then add it to the Go List. Only then is it possible to play the Go List itself. That’s fairly annoying.
It’s the only player in our round-up that provides the option to increase its capacity Ð it has a slot for micro-SD memory cards. These are starting to show up in high-end phones and are quite expensive, but in a year or so could provide an inexpensive way to get more space when the supplied 4Gb is full.
The Sansa E260 can play video files, although these need to be specially converted using the supplied software. Music, on the other hand, can be simply copied to the device using Windows Media Player, or just Windows itself. The E260 was neck and neck with Apple’s Nano, and we simply couldn’t separate them – the first true rival to the daddy of portable music players.
Sony NW-A1200
As might be expected from as style-conscious a company as Sony, the NW-A1200 (€240) comes packaged in a sleek purple and black card box. It’s one of only two that come with a mains charger (the others charge using the PC’s USB connection). It’s also one of two to contain a hard disk, which explains its 8Gb capacity, larger (along with the MSI player) than all the other players. However, like the iPod Nano, it’s not possible to simply drag and drop music files on to the player using Windows – the SonicStage software has to be installed. The installation wizard refused to work on our test PC, so we had to browse the supplied CD, find the appropriate setup file, and run the installation program directly, after which it worked.
The buttons can be a little tricky to press, as they are small and recessed slightly into the body of the player. The menus are easy to follow, however. The player is a little slower than most of the others, on account of using a hard disk rather than flash memory for storage. This takes longer to search through, so there was a slight delay when finding tracks, and similar tasks.
Playback quality was good, and the player’s screen, although it’s only a monochrome green screen, is readable. We noticed a lot of flicker on the screen, though, which may be a problem for some. It only plays music, not pictures or video, but it has a few nice touches such as an intelligent shuffle mode and the ability to play through favourite songs. There’s also the ability to output a line-out signal through the headphone socket, which means it can play music through unamplified speakers. The supplied earbud headphones were a good quality pair.
The winners are…
All the players use a USB connection to the PC, although only the MSI and Creative players use standard leads, so if the others break, it could mean an expensive replacement. The difference between hard disks and flash memory is small in use, so the two hard disk players in our group test have the advantage, capacity-wise.
All the players use similar menu systems for locating tracks, but the iPod’s scroll wheel is by far the easiest navigation tool, a method Apple protects with a patent, which it refuses to license to rivals. Only the Sandisk Sansa comes close, while the others are all hamstrung by some aspect of their navigation.
The screen sizes are similar, except for the smaller screens on the Apple and Sony players. The Sony player is the only monochrome screen, but this won’t matter too much as the player can’t show images anyway. All the others can, and in addition the Iriver, MSI and Sandisk players can play video in specific formats.
Because the merits of the iPod nano and Sansa e260 are so closely matched, we have awarded two Buy It awards. The Sansa has a microphone and recorder, and plays video, while the Apple is sleeker, slimmer and easier to use. For most it will be down to personal preference.
On a similar level is the MSI P640, which has a decent navigation system, a good screen, and lots of storage.
Finally the Creative and Iriver players are worthwhile buys, although none of them reaches the level of the Sandisk and Apple devices.
Contacts:
www.peats.com for Creative and Iriver
www.tnsdistribution.com for Sandisk
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