Portable media players review and compare

What to buy
Brand / Model	Price
Media players with flash drive
Sony NWZA728B	$199
Sony NWZA826KB	$229
# Sony NWZA729B	$279
SanDisk Sansa Fuze	$129
Apple iPod Touch (32GB)	$549
Creative Zen X-Fi (16GB)	$330
Creative Zen X-Fi (8GB)	$250
Media players with hard disk
Cowon iAudio A3	$679
Next G phone
Apple iPhone (16GB)	Telco

Product profiles - what to buy  

Media players with flash drive

Sony NWZA728B

Price: $199
Capacity: 8GB

Good points:

• Very good sound quality.
• Excellent video playback quality.
• Excellent battery life.
• Earbuds fit into ear canal.
• Easily fits in pocket.

Bad points:

• Had to pay to upgrade Sony software.

Sony NWZA826KB

Price: $229
Capacity: 4GB

Good points:

• Very good sound quality.
• Excellent video playback quality.
• Longest battery life in this test.
• Earbuds fit into ear canal.
• Easily fits in pocket.
• Bluetooth support (headphones included).

Bad points:

• Only OK sound quality when using the Bluetooth headset.
• Had to pay to upgrade Sony software.

# Sony NWZA729B

Price: $279
Capacity: 16GB

Good points:

• Very good sound quality.
• Excellent video playback quality.
• Excellent battery life.
• Earbuds fit into ear canal.
• Easily fits in pocket.

Bad points:

• Had to pay to upgrade Sony software.

SanDisk Sansa Fuze

Price: $129
Capacity: 4GB

Good points:

• Very good sound quality.
• Compact unit.
• Least expensive on test.
• Very good battery life.
• Easily fits in pocket.
• Can expand memory.

Bad points:

• Small screen for video.
• Necessary video conversion software must be downloaded.

Apple iPod Touch

Price: $549
Capacity: 32GB

Good points:

• Very good sound quality.
• Excellent video playback quality.
• Large screen size.
• Excellent battery life.
• Second highest storage capacity.
• Wi-Fi support (802.11 b/g).

Bad points:

• Inferior transfer of mpeg-2 video.
• Relatively expensive.
• Comparatively large unit.
• Had to download 3rd party video conversion tool.

Creative Zen X-Fi

Price: $330
Capacity: 16GB

Good points:

• Rated equal first in sound quality.
• Excellent video playback quality.
• Easy transfer of mpeg-2 video.
• Earbuds fit into ear canal.
• Comparatively small unit.
• Wi-Fi support (802.11 b/g).
• Easily fits in pocket.
• Can expand memory.

Bad points:

• Supplied software would not rip properly without upgrade.

Creative Zen X-Fi

Price: $250
Capacity: 8GB

Good points:

• Rated equal first in sound quality.
• Excellent video playback quality.
• Easy transfer of mpeg-2 video.
• Earbuds fit into ear canal.
• Comparatively small unit.
• Relatively inexpensive.
• Easily fits in pocket.
• Can expand memory.

Bad points:

• Supplied software would not rip properly without upgrade.

Media players with hard disk

Cowon iAudio A3

Price: $679
Capacity: 80GB

Good points:

• Excellent video playback quality.
• Large screen size.
• Largest storage capacity.
  

Bad points:

• Comparatively expensive.
• Comparatively large and heavy unit.

Next G phones

Apple iPhone

Price: $Telco dependent
Capacity: 16GB

Good points:

• Rated equal first in the listening test.
• Excellent video playback quality.
• Large screen size.
• Next G mobile phone with digital camera.
• Wi-Fi support (802.11 b/g).
• Bluetooth support.

Bad points:

• Inferior transfer of mpeg-2 video.
• Comparatively large unit.
• Had to download 3rd party video conversion tool.

Product profiles - the rest

Creative Zen

Price: $180
Capacity: 8 GB

Good points

• Excellent video playback quality.
• Easy transfer of mpeg-2 video.
• Comparatively small unit.
• Comparatively inexpensive.
• Easily fits in pocket.
• Can expand memory.

Bad points

• Nothing to mention.

SanDisk Sansa View

Price: $199
Capacity: 8GB

Good points

• Easily fits in pocket.
  Can expand memory.

Bad points

• Had to download SanDisk video conversion software.

# Philips SA5245BT

Price: $180
Capacity: 4GB

Good points

• Easy transfer of mpeg-2 video.
• Highest ease of use.
• Earbuds fit into ear canal.
• Comparatively inexpensive.
• Bluetooth support.

Bad points

• Only scored 50% on video playback.
• Small screen for video.

Samsung YP-S3A

Price: $149
Capacity: 4GB

Good points

• Compact unit.
• Cheapest unit in test.
• Easily fits in pocket.

Bad points

• Small screen for video.
• Inferior transfer of mpeg-2 video.

Lenoxx MP37100

Price: $150
Capacity: 4GB

Good points

• Comparatively inexpensive.
• Easily fits in pocket.
• Comparatively small unit.
• Can expand memory.

Bad points

• Lowest rated player in the listening test.
• Poor video playback quality.
• Inferior transfer of mpeg-2 video.
• Lowest score in ease of use.

Next G Profiles

Nokia N95

Price: $1059
Capacity: 8GB

Good points

• Next G mobile phone with digital camera.
• Wi-Fi support (802.11 b/g).
• Bluetooth support.
• Can expand memory.

Bad points

• Only OK sound quality.
• Inferior transfer of mpeg-2 video.
• Comparatively expensive, but has both camera and phone.
• A little bulky in the pocket.
• Only 54% for battery score.
• Only 50% for video playback quality.

HTC Touch Diamond

Price: $999
Capacity: 4GB

Good points

• Next G mobile phone with digital camera.
• Easily fits in pocket.
• Wi-Fi support (802.11 b/g).
• Bluetooth support.

Bad points

• Only OK sound quality.
• Poor video playback quality.
• Inferior transfer of mpeg-2 video.
• Comparatively expensive, but has both camera and phone.

#Discontinued but may still be available in some stores

Rechargeable battery

All the media players have a built-in rechargeable (Li-ion or Li-polymer) battery pack that you can recharge from your computer’s USB port or from an AC adaptor. Batteries generally charge faster from an AC adaptor than from a USB port. The Results table lists which players can still be used while they’re recharging.

Fast forward

You may want to fast forward or rewind through some of your media files, especially videos. All the media players on test have this ability.

Larger screens

These are useful if you’ve got lots of music files to organise, or want to store and view photos and video. If you want to use them to watch movies or display your photos then the largest models are likely to be more useful.

Storage capacity

Video files tend to take up more space than music files, so look for more capacity if you plan on storing a lot of video files on your portable media player.

• 4GB is not enough for one DVD
• 8GB is enough for at least one DVD
• 16GB is enough for multiple DVDs

File types supported

If you want to use your player for things other than listening to music, check whether it supports the relevant file types. The most common file format for photos is JPG; for video, it’s MP4 and of course they will all play an MP3 music file.

We used either iTunes or Windows Media Player (WMP) if there was no software supplied. iTunes is free to download, but is quite large at around 64MB for Windows XP, so there will be a cost if you’re on a limited internet plan. WMP is installed with Windows operating systems, but the latest update is 25MB, so it’s not so small either.

Both are easy to use for simple tasks like ripping CDs, transferring to a player and organising music on your computer, but also contain some digital rights management functions which may restrict their usefulness.

Most of the audio software supplied with the players is also reasonably easy to use, but the Lenoxx software was difficult to install and instructions were difficult to follow.

The Creative Zen X-FI software had to be replaced with a 20MB downloaded version as the supplied version didn’t work properly.

To get the video onto the players, we had to convert our in-house video with the supplied software. A majority of the players’ video software ranged from poor to OK in ease of use. Only the Creative, Philips and SanDisk players had video software that was relatively easy to use.

The Apple players and the Nokia phone were the only ones we had to download a third party tool to convert the in-house video, the Apple players due to the way its software deals with the format we chose and the Nokia because the instructions were difficult to understand. To convert the video for the Sony players, we had to upgrade a Sony software tool at a cost of $US12.95.

We would like to see the ease of use of video software improve in alignment with the audio software. Ideally, simply dragging and dropping a video file, regardless of the format, into an intuitively named directory and having the player auto-convert the video would be easiest for a consumer.