Between CES and MacWorld, we’ve seen some incredible products announced in the last couple weeks. Seems like everyone is jumping on the Personal Media Player bandwagon. This is definitely something I want to invest in this year. The question is, which one?
Here are the ones that really spark my interest, all in the $300-400 range, I think:
viliv P1 Now this just looks sweet.
Toshiba Gigabeat S This looks pretty promising.
Creative Vision M OK, it’s an iPod ripoff, and Creative’s other players feel kind of cheap, but this has gotten some really great reviews.
Another interesting device is the iSee 360i This uses your iPod’s hard drive, but adds a nice screen and video playback capabilities.
The other option is to just spring for an iPod video. I bought my iPod photo 3 weeks before the video one was released. Dammit. The other devices offer more features, more formats, etc. But they are also just that, other devices you’d have to carry around. Sure, I might bring it on the plane, or somewhere I know I’m going to be stuck waiting around for a while. But otherwise, it’s going to stay at home unless I think I might need it. On the other hand, I generally bring my iPod everywhere. It’s just in my jacket pocket or bag, or pants pocket. If I find myself in a long line somewhere, bang, fire up the next episode of That 70s Show.
My biggest fear is that I’ll by a new iPod and 3 weeks later they’ll announce a new one with 3d holographic projection video, and I’ll be kicking myself again.
So what are the latest iPod rumors?
And any other PMPs out there that look good?
I just spent a lot of time considering getting a PMP of some sort. Anything by Archos is nice if you want a good size viewing screen. The new Toshiba Gigabeat looks great though.
Latest iPod rumour I’ve been reading is iPod HiFi, a video iPod with a bigger screen.
Then I almost bought a Sony PSP because the screen is gorgeous and I could play games as well as watch movies. I ended up not getting it because the games almost all suck and I’d have to get a handful of 1GB Sony Memorysticks to put the movies on because no way am I buying their UMD discs.
So what did I end up getting to entertain me on my upcoming flight to Hong Kong… a Nintendo DS, no movies, but the price is right and the games rock. It will make the time fly by and that’s really what I was looking for. This way I can hold out for the next great thing in PMPs!
I came real close to a PSP a couple of times, but yeah, the whole memory stick thing just seems like a hassle. Throw a 20 gig hard disk in there, and I’m sold.
I wont buy one until its got decent web browsing via wifi. And I mean at least flash 7 (or maybe lite 2). Anyway I would check out iriver u10 http://u10.iriver.com/ -Nice site btw.
Yeah, I was checking out Scott Janousek’s u10 a few weeks ago. Nice device, but I’d want more storage and a bigger screen.
Not that I bought a PMP or am planning to buy one, but over the holidays I was looking to pick up an mp3 player for the girlfriend. I’m one of those techno geeks who reads up on all the gobldy gook on all of the techno bable sites like tomshardware, sharkeyextreme and so on, and I thought i was well versed in the knowledge of the mp3 player world and music world to boot, and so I had gone to the nearest best buy in the area for the quest to pick up the ultimate mp3 player for the price/performance ratio – i ended up staring at the entire selection probably for over 2 hours and still couldn’t make a great decision. Finally broken down and beaten knowing that I wasn’t the ultimate mp3 guru of all time, I asked an employee for help. The best buy representative gave me a very good and solid point while picking out the player.
He said: “Choose Creative. Just think about it, they’re the guys who create all those fancy sound cards – It’s what they do.” (now that’s not a direct quote mind you, but this was months ago and that was pretty much the gist of it)
And so I had to agree with him for one main reason. I just bought myself a Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro. The cream of the crop of sound cards. I had forgotten that creative had made this great piece of hardware. Go figure.
Anyways, the girlfriend loves the mp3 player. I find it’s very easy to use – drag and drop to a folder style mp3 shtuff etc.. but overall i’m happy with my purchase.
Now about PMP’s. After reading several reviews of creative products, I’m pretty much sold. They just need a better online music service like Apple has.
Just my two cents! 🙂
Creative makes a good product. I have a Creative Zen Nomad 30 gig player. Had no complaints with it, but got an iPod mini for my birthday a year+ ago. When that died I couldn’t go back to the bulky creative though, so I got a regular iPod. I admit I am a sucker for the sexy design of the iPods. When the Creative Zen Vision M hits the stores, I’ll see how it looks and feels. I’ve read some great reviews on it. Biggest downside seems to be that it’s about twice as thick as an iPod.