Flash MP3 Overview

Flash Memory: They are solid-state devices with no moving parts therefore no skipping. Hence it's popularity with the fitness buffs. They are much smaller and lighter of the two types of MP3 players. Roughly the size of a lipstick, weighting from about 1.5 to 4 ounces.

Most players have 128 megabytes (MB) and up of internal memory; 128 MB can hold about two hours of MP3-formatted music recorded at a CD-quality setting. You can fit more music into memory if you compress songs into smaller files, but that may result in lower audio quality. Some flash-memory players also have expansion slots to add more memory via card slots.

PROS
-No moving parts - skip-free
-Extremely compact and lightweight
-Easy to grasp, fits nicely in an armband
-Long battery life (days vs. hours)

CONS -Limited memory (usually less than 1GB of storage)
-Much higher cost per megabyte than hard-drive players

Best for:
-Strenuous, high-impact physical activity
-Storing small documents such as spreadsheets and Word files.

Size hours of music amount of songs

128 MB

2 hrs

32 songs

256 MB

4.25 hrs

64 songs

512 MB

8.5 hrs

128 songs

1 GB

17 hrs

250 songs

TOP FLASH MP3 PLAYERS

iRiver iFP 790 Creative Muvo TX FM Rio Forge

Photo credits to iRver, Rio and Creative

We looked at 7 different comparative reviews: CNet.com, MP3.com, Consumer Reports, PC World, PC Magazine, About.com and Wired.

From those 7 different reviews we assigned a scoring system of:

3 points for a first place ranking on the review

2 points for a second place ranking on the review

1 point for a third place ranking on the review

.75 for a forth place ranking on the review

.5 for a fifth place ranking on the review

Now some of our astute readers are already aware that Cnet.com and MP3.com are basically the same website owned by CNet networks Inc.. Therefore for those two reviews where the top 2 products are the same on both reviews while the rest of the review is different, we only gave one set of points for each player on those two reviews instead of giving the top two players double value for the exact same review. I hope that makes sense.

After we added all the points up we look at the top 3 and try to summarize all the important points onto one page.

For a complete overview of the MP3 Player Market and a description of how the review was done click here

Prices

All prices from amazon.com