Where should I begin? What I think an mp3 player should have? Problems I’ve had with music players in the past? What I think get’s the best BPB [Bang Per Buck] rating? Eh, I don’t know, so I’ll just start typing whatever comes to mind.

Over the last few months, I’ve been researching music players quite a bit. My main conclusion is this: The mp3 player age is nearly over! Terminated! Discontinued! Ceased! No more! Finito!

“But… mp3 players are bigger than ever,”you say. Frankly, I don’t see much truth in that. Not because music is going to loose popularity [it's growing faster than ever], but because what we know as mp3 players don’t just play music anymore. They hold pictures, video, games, internet, and, you guessed it, personal style. Think about it. The most commonly heard mp3 player, the iPod, has gone far past music. At this point, the only version that doesn’t play video is the shuffle! The Creative Zen plays videos. The SanDisk Sansa is rarely seen without a 16-bit video/picture displaying LCD. The Zune is made for visual delight. Cell phones are becoming portable media players that become phones. With that said, I shall restate my early-stated conclusion: the mp3 player age is almost over!

From this point on, you shan’t hear me use the term mp3 player, but I’ll be referring to them as “media players”.

Let’s start with the brand I like to rant about the most- Apple. I dislike the way their media player became so popular that iPod became a regular word. I’ve seen people actually witnessed people call a SanDisk a “black iPod”. Foey! Electronic devices shouldn’t be improper nouns! It’s blasphemy, I tell ya’!
Let’s talk about the actual media player, shall we? To begin, I’d like to say that the iPod is way overrated, and just like most of the things Apple makes, overpriced. I’m not paying $150+ for a 4GB media player no matter how small! As long as it fits in my jeans’ pockets (which is most media players), I’m good. Now there is one reasonably priced iPod that I wouldn’t mind buying, however. The 160GB iPod Classic, $300 if you search in the right place. Holds more junk than you’ll ever need (unless you put all your HD movies in there). Other than that, overpriced and overrated. The iPod touch is way too small space-wise. That would be alright with me if it had an SD expansion slot, but no such luck. 30GB is my usual standard for space, and 16GB for $350 just doesn’t cut it for me, though [as painful as it is for me to say,] it is undeniable that the iPod touch’s UI is pretty well thought-out. Maybe I’ll get a touch when the new 32GB gets down to $300 and there are at least 30 decent widgets [with the help of the iPhone/touch SDK]. Maybe.

So what do I like? The Zune. The Zune 30GB to be specific. How would you like a media player that stores 30GB for under $200? Microsoft has that. Wanna know who else does that? Nobody. Yeah, the company that often gets blamed for overpriced electronics fires back! As for the Zune 4GB and 8GB, I’m not too excited. I know it’s small, has the same screen resolution, and costs a tad less, but still, you can get much more BPB with a little searching. And as for the 80GB Zune: heh, neat. I like the touch interface (the 4/8GB has the same, BTW) and the fact that it packs 80 gigs into a small, sexy package, but for $250 [and no SD slot], I’m not buying just yet. I think it’ll be down to $200 by the holidays.

I’d like to make a final “notable mensions” paragraph, but unfortunately, I can’t find more than two worth mensioning. There’s the $130 SanDisk Sansa 8GB that has an SD slot, and the all holy (but non-relevant to the subject) Nokia N800 with a touch screen, stereo speakers, handwriting recognition, wifi, SD, Skype, Mozilla, Widgets, remote computing to a PC, a very nice interface, and a Linux-Based OS, but it’s made to be a cell phone, and deserves to be in a blog post by itself. Yes, that was a run-on sentence, but it’s hard to refrain from doing so when trying to describe the N800

So for all of you screaming “I know better media players than that!,” then let me know in the comments box. I’ll read it, don’t worry. I read all my comments for the most part.

[BTW, a blog post side-image is comming up soon!]