Two types of MP3 players
There are 2 main types of portable MP3 players in the market these days: the flash-based MP3 players and the hard-drive-based MP3 players. There is some debate as to which of the two is better,common sense would tell you to get a hard drive version if big storage is what you crave for. But each of them has their own advantage and disadvantages. In this article we compare hard disk based memory mobile players and flash based counterparts.
Flash-memory based MP3 players are the most common kinds of MP3 players in the market these days because of the long life-span of flash-memory (meaning your player could be used for up to 10 years) and the compactness of the players. They are also more drop-proof (if you drop your player, it is more likely to fail because of the LCD screen broke than because the memory-chip or other components broke). However, they are limited to at most 8GB or 16GB and could be relatively expensive (based on price/GB) if you need a lot of storage space.
Hard-Drive based MP3 players have the advantage of being able to store huge amount of audio/video files in a very compact machine. They are also the cheapest if you rank by price/GB. They are very suitable for storing video files which may be too large-size to store in flash-memory-based players. However, they are typically heavier and more likely to fail if you drop them.
In general, hard disks have a lower price-per-Mbyte at high capacities, but have fixed costs that make them more costly at lower capacities. Therefore, analysts such as In-Stat believe the two memory formats will always co-exist. Customers who require 20 to 60 GB of capacity in their digital audio players are music enthusiasts who require large amounts of memory to store enormous music libraries. They want all their music with them at all times; therefore they will require higher-capacity HDD players. On the other hand, there will be a wide audience that is price-sensitive and does not require loads of memory space, especially first-time MP3 player buyers. These customers will turn to lower-priced, Flash-based MP3 players.
Some people think flash drive mp3 players rule over hard drive mp3 players. They think with today’s technology, internal flash drives can hold up to a whopping 32 Gigabytes! That’s a very large amount of data capacity for something so small. Also, most of your mp3 players using a hard drive, don’t give the option to add flash memory cards, increasing your memory, while flash drive mp3 players almost always have a slot to add more flash memory cards. This is one of the reasons that flash drive mp3 players rule over hard drive mp3 players, but is also probably the most important reason.










