Portable media players review and compare

04.What to look for

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.