Portable music players, commonly referred to as mp3 players, are becoming more and more common.  The Apple iPod ® really helped to market these to the masses by combining a quality player with an extremely user friendly interface, as well as excellent marketing with the Apple iTunes Music Store and iTunes music player.

 

The first consideration should be whether to get a flash memory based or hard drive based player. Flash players store your music on memory chips, so there are no moving parts to get damaged.  Hard drive players use small spinning hard drives (like in a computer) to store your information. 

Generally, flash based players are thought of as being "sturdier", since they have no moving parts to be damaged.  This is often preferred by those who are going to use their player while participating in active sports, such as biking or skiing/snowboarding, where the player could potentially be jarred fairly hard.  Generally they are also much more compact, so they are more convenient for carrying around, or wearing on an arm band.

Hard drive based players generally have a much larger capacity for storing music than their flash based brethren.  However, they also tend to be more expensive, though the price per Megabyte of storage is lower.  For instance, you may be able to get a 1 GB flash based player for $150, and a 20 GB hard drive based player for $300.  The hard drive based player is twice as expensive, but you get 20 times the capacity.

The next question to ask is what sort of features do you want?  Here are some important considerations:

Formats played - What sort of music files will it play?  Most players will play mp3 files, which are by far the most abundant.  However, be careful, some won't!  For instance, Sony just recently started making players that support mp3s, which is part of why they lost the domination of the portable music scene they had established with the walkmans.  Other important formats include:

• AAC - the protected music format used primarily by Apple for their iTunes store
• WMA - Windows Media Audio files, the music compression format from Microsoft.  For lower bitrate (smaller) files, these tend to have higher quality sound.  And, if the player carries the PlaysForSure logo it can play protected WMA files, which is used by a great many online music stores to sell music over the internet, including Napster and Yahoo's music subscription services.
• OGG - Probably the highest quality compressed format, but also the least used music format.

Size - How big is it?  If you want to be carrying it around, will it be comfortable to hold, fit in your pocket, or feel OK in a shirt pocket, armband, or belt clip?  Usually there will be statistics for the dimensions and weight of a player.  For instance, the iPod Shuffle (a flash based player) is 3.3in x .98 in x .33 in, and weighs .78 oz.  Pretty small and light - that's a little bigger than a pack of gum.  As a rule of thumb, the flash memory based players (see above) will be smaller than the ones with internal hard drives.

 

Display - Does it have a display?  If so, how many lines, and how many characters across can it display?  Is it just a few lines of text, or is it a large color screen that can display pictures, or even movies?  Consider what you want in a display - a few lines of text is sufficient if all you want is to see information about currently playing songs, or to choose what song plays next.  However, if you want to display pictures or movies, you may want a large, color screen.  Some players, namely the iPod Shuffle, have no display at all, which means you have no control over what song is playing, and no way to check the name of a song you may be unfamiliar with.

 

Power - What sort of batteries does it use?  Will you need to supply your own AA or AAA batteries? (If so, I HIGHLY recommend using rechargeable NiMH batteries.)  If it has a built in battery, is it replaceable after the battery wears out?  If not, your player may have a lifespan of only a few years.  Also, does it come with, or have available, a way to plug in an external adapter, such as an AC adapter or a plug for your car's cigarette lighter?  This should be a consideration if you plan on using your player in the car or hooked up to your stereo.