Introduction to MP3 Players

An MP3 player is one of the most popular types of portable music player, with many important advantages over traditional personal CD, cassette and minidisc players.

What You Need to Know

MP3 is simply the name of a type of computer file. It works by shrinking the amount of data needed in a recording to a fraction of its original size with a slight, and undetectable, reduction in sound quality.

MP3 players are much smaller than CD players and minidisc players, so they fit more easily in your pocket. They can also hold more tunes. The Apple Shuffle, for example, is about a tiny 27x41x10 mm and can hold around 240 songs in 1 GB of hard disk space, whilst the larger iPod Classic is 103x61x10 mm, but can hold up to 40,000 songs on its 160 GB hard drive.

You will need a computer to use an MP3 player, and ideally access to the internet. You can copy or 'rip' CDs you already own on to your computer and transfer them to the player, or you can download music on to the player from online music websites such as Apple's ITunes website.

Technically, copying your own CDs is illegal, as is downloading music from illegitimate websites. There are some legitimate websites that allow you to pay to download music.

Hard Disk vs. Solid State

There are two types of MP3 player: hard disk and solid state. Hard-disk players tend to be larger and bulkier than solid-state players, but they can store more music. Hard-disk players can have anywhere between 4 and 160 GB - you pay more for the higher capacity models.

Solid-state players are smaller and lighter than hard-disk players, but can't store a huge number of tracks. The largest at the moment can hold around 16 GB, which is enough for around 3,500 songs. You can increase the capacity of some solid-state players by using additional digital camera-style memory cards.