Sunday, January 22, 2006

(Possibly) Music to my ears...

So now that I got the new camera, a new portable music player is next on my list of tech-goodies to go after.
The search all started when I first heard tell of this one. I was drawn in by the company, the styling and the features. Notably it had several intriguing claims as to high sound quality as well as the SD-memory expansion slot. However, I was, at the time, turned off by the price as well as the lack of information available on it. The release date had been the beginning of Dec. 2005, but that didn't happen. The Sandisk edition of it got mixed reviews. However, looking at it now, the Alienware seems to have dropped significantly in price, a good $50ish. That does make it a lot more appealing, pending reviews, of course.
Anyway, I was originally limiting my search to products available at Circuit City due to my $100 gift card I had from there. I spent that recently on a 1 GB xD card for my new camera. So now I am free from looking at any specific retailer, I was able to greatly expand my search. I was in a Cambridge soundworks getting a new center channel for my sound-system at home and I noticed a bunch of the portable audio players they had on display. They seem to be one of the few retailers who sell non-iPods in the majority, which is refereshing though expected since they are owned by Creative. One in particular caught my eye. 5GB seemed to be sufficient, my entire music library is ~5GB and the current playlist I've culled out of that is only about 2.2 GB. The Alienware/Sandisk expandable Flash-based player basically tops out at 3GB (1GB interntal + 2GB expansion) but at a ~$300 while the Creative Muvo2 (5GB) is ~$230. Both have custom equalizers and FM tuners. Would I make much use of either feature? I dunno. The Alienware is still attractive as sans memory card, its cheaper than the Muvo and I can always buy a SD card later.
I also thought about getting another MD player. I love my current one's battery life (~40h/AA battery!) and sound quality, but SonicStage is beyond suck-tastic, and I honestly don't trust Sony software anymore anyhow (and just as soon not give them my business, either). However, only Sony makes the new Hi-MD (1 GB) compatible players and they are both too expensive and tied to the repulsive Sony software. Oh well.
Then, just today, I was on Tom's Hardware and they had a review of high (>20GB) capacity players, basically stacking the Video iPod against its competitors. The Archos model then jumped out at me as being just what I want: an Mp3 player. Not a portable video/photo viewer, or even a radio or voice recorder. It has drag-and-drop media transfer and rated high on ergonomics, according to Tom. I've found it several places at notably less than the $230 price of the MuVo2, basically knocking it out of the running. Any opinions anyone, either way?

What I'm wondering, is why no media player I've seen out there has an integrated FM transmitter for playing it in a car that lacks a tape deck (like mine) or on a home stereo without having to run cables. Maybe they don't want to have to screw with getting FCC certification for a media player/feature that most people won't use? If someone puts out a quality player in the near-future that has an integrated FM transmitter you'd get very close consideration from me.

1 comment:

Dan said...

I say just suck up the indie pride and get an ipod nano. Course, I haven't put into this the extensive research that you have, but:
$180 (after student discount)
Works with iTunes, no crazy compatibility issues (course, as an engineer, you probably enjoy those :)
2gb (as you said, that's just about enough)
here's the kicker: it's flash memory. no moving parts, won't break like a HD player will.

I appreciate the research, but I still think that, for the price and capacity, none of the competitors compare. Just my two cents.

Course, if you want to go for the high-capacity (and HD-based) 20gb range, that Archos looks pretty good (just from my first glance)

-Da"such a sellout"n