iPod or MP3 Player

iPod or an MP3 player? a question that is asked a lot. I have had both owning an iPod Classic and an MP3 player. Thing is MP3 players used to be very small in memory size and where the size of USB pens. MP3 players these days are now built into all / most mobile phones and for me there is not really much to choose between an MP3 player and an iPod if anything at all. It is really down to personal preference or money, don't forget iPods are expensive.

You have of course got the iPhone now too, but again for me there is nothing to choose between an iPhone and a normal smartphone the only difference really being the Technology and operating systems.

I bought this years ago and it is currently out of use, good job really or I may have had nothing to write in this Hub. I only bought the 4GB iPod, at the time I did not know a great deal about them other than they were the best thing to buy and play music through. The main reason I bought one was because I like to listen to music in my car, the iPod allowed you to do that with the use of wireless radio transmitters.

The 4GB version was more than adequate for me at the time as I did not really have any intention of watching movies, I simply wanted to play music. The iPod is very appealing for just that as it is so simple to use. Once you have downloaded iTunes to your computer all you do is add your music, iTunes does the rest for you. iPods use an MP4 file to play music, you still download your music as normal and iTunes converts it to MP4 format automatically for you.

You now have your iPod fully loaded with your music and at your finger tips are all the albums or individual songs that you love, iPods give them a really slick look by allowing you to add Album art. This means that when you are playing a tune the relevant Album cover will appear on the screen with all the details of the Artist and song.

iPods are pretty great and the operating systems that they come with a very stable and hardly ever crash, I really do like them but like I say the newest models are very expensive. So what is your alternative?

This is your alternative pretty much any Smartphone on the market these days. I currently use a Samsung Galaxy Europa a handset that I have no complaints about. The Samsung uses the Google operating system and like the latest iPhone or iPod it is touchscreen, and has a built in music player, and again you can use this with your car radio via a wireless FM transmitter.

You can download software from Samsung called Samsung Kies, their version of iTunes if you like. It is a little bit more hassle than iTunes but once you get used to it you'll be fine. This pretty much works the same way all you do is add you music and Kies does the rest. Plug your Samsung into your computer and sync the data.

I now have all the music from my iPod on my phone maybe even more, like iPod's the Samsung Galaxy allows you to have Album art giving you a display similar to the iPod with all the Artist and song details along side the album sleeve. The Samsung does of course have a smaller screen than the iPhone but again this does not bother me.

The Samsung will also allow you to add video content to the phone, movies for example just make sure you have a big enough memory card, for me an mobile phone MP3 player offers everything an iPod can.

Ok so there you have the information you are looking for, for me I will be sticking with the mobile phone certainly for now anyways. It does everything I want it to do and in my opinion there is no need to fork out £150+ on a fancy new 4th gen iPod, but like I say it is down to personal preference and what you find the easiest to use.