Listen To This! The Great JAMM Portable Media Player Showdown. Part 2: Hardware
Posted by: dgoldring on Oct 24 2008
When I started thinking about this series, one of the hardest things to wrap my brain around was where to begin. Then, I thought about Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music. “Start at the very beginning. A very good place to start.” You know what? That is excellent advice. So, rather than getting into some of the more complex areas like playing music or videos, I thought we would start with what you see right out of the box. Usually, the battery is dead or near to it when you buy a new media player, so the first thing you are going to do is not watch a video or play some music. The first thing you will do is tear through that box and examine the hardware (pining for the ability to use it while it is charging.) So, I thought it made the most sense to start there…right out of the box. And we will do that in a few initial articles.
Today, I am going to take a look at the players themselves. Turned off, and just looking at the hardware and construction. The next two installments will look at the rest of the contents of the respective boxes, including earphones and accessories. We’ll then wrap up this initial section with a look at the controls on each of the devices. Then, we’ll start to look into what happens when you turn these things on and start playing with them. So, let’s jump right in and start at the very beginning. You slowly and carefully remove your new device from the packaging…
What I found interesting was how similarly these players were designed. With the exception of the Creative Zen X-Fi, they are all vertically aligned with the screen on top and controls either underneath or on the side. We’ll cover the controls in a later article, though I will say that the Samsung YP-P2 is the only one of the six to feature a touch screen.
[iPod Nano 3G] [iPod Nano 4G]
The strangest thing to me was the iPod Nano, which had moved away from this design when the third generation Nano was released. In place of this vertical design, the 3rd Generation Nano was squatter and wider, earning itself the nickname, “fatty.” We hardly had a chance to know the fatty, however, because this 4th Generation player returns to the vertical shape and design popularized by the 2nd Generation iPod Nano. I am not really sure why Apple made the decision to switch to the fatty design and then switch back. Personally, I liked the unique design of the fatty and wish they had kept it in this 4th Generation player. Apple chose not to do so, however, reverting back to the same vertical shape as the others.
[iPod Nano 4G] [Zune]
The five vertical players are all pretty close in height. The smallest is the iPod Nano at 3 9/16 inches. the tallest is the Sandisk Sansa View, which measures about 4 1/4 inches. In between, the Zune and Sony are both about 3 5/8 inches, while the Samsung is 3 15/16 inches. So, really, there is very little difference in the height of these devices, with ranges varying only about half an inch from the shortest to the tallest.
[Sony A828] [Samsung YP-P2]
The Creative Zen X-Fi, on the other hand is horizontally aligned with the controls located to the right of the screen. It is just over two inches tall, but is 3 1/8 inches long. That makes it smaller than the iPod Nano, but significantly thicker. In fact at nearly half an inch thick, it is by far the fattest of the six.
[Sandisk Sansa View] [Creative Zen X-fi]
The iPod Nano is the Twiggy of the bunch (that’s it on top). It is impossibly thin. It is amazing to think that the same 8 or 16 GBs of storage contained in the other players can also be contained in such a skinny device.
The other four players are all pretty close to one another in width. The Zune (second from top) is the skinniest of the four remaining devices, then the Sony (third from top), Samsung (fifth from top), and finally the Sansa (fourth from top). But really, the difference in thickness between those four was barely measurable, and amounted to hundredths of an inch from the skinniest to the thickest.
One thing you will notice when you look at the picture of all six of these devices together is the vast amount of black. For the most part, media players have always been made in black, and the lack of colors is somewhat disappointing. The Samsung, Creative Zen, and Sandisk Sansa continue this disappointing trend, and are offered in only one color (though there is a special edition slim Samsung which comes in burgundy.)
The Sony offers a pink version (which I have not tested), while the Zune comes in several different colors. What is disappointing about the Zune is that the colors are assigned to specific models. For example, the 4 and 80 GB models come in red, however, that color is not available in any other sizes or models. Blue is designated solely for the 8 GB, and the others (including the 16 GB I used for this series) come only in black (and, of course, the classic brown.) While I appreciated the liberal use of color from the Zune crowed, the lack of true choices was a disappointment.
This is one area in which the iPod Nano really excelled. It comes in a panoply of colors, so you are assured that the color best matching your personality will be available (not all colors shown.) The best part is that all of the colors are available in each of the different models. so, there is no need to choose between the model or features you like and the color you want.
The final thing I wanted to point out about the hardware here is the construction and materials. with the exception of the iPod Nano, all of the media players are constructed from two pieces of metal or plastic, with a seam in the middle. The Sony does a nice job of 
hiding this seam by placing a strip of metal around the edge where the seam is. The problem with this seam is that after some use, the two halves can start to separate.
What I really liked about the Sansa, however, was the rubberized plastic used to construct the bottom of the device. This goes a long way toward protecting your Sansa from damage, even without an additional case. The rubberized plastic just absorbs dings and nicks. It also grips the surface of your desk, not allowing the Sansa to slide around like the others do.
At the other end of this spectrum was the Creative Zen X-fi. I was disappointed to find what felt like thin plastic on the bottom half of this device. I really felt like a sudden drop or tight squeeze would seriously damage this plastic back.
Which, once again, brings us to the iPod Nano. I told you this was the only player with no seam in the hardware. The outer shell is constructed from a single piece of metal (colored obviously.) This seamless construction is extremely sturdy and much less prone to accidental damage through ordinary use than the other players.
What really impressed me was how much memory and how many features were crammed into such tiny packages. The iPod Nano is impossibly skinny. Using it felt like watching a supermodel eat a submarine sandwich. The features keep cramming in, but the thing just keeps getting smaller and skinnier. The others players, while not quite as skinny and tiny, were no less impressive. As this series continues, we will unearth massive amounts of memory, touch screens, FM radios, videos, and much more, all confined in a space that is less that half an inch thick. Stay tuned…we have a lot more to review!
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