Listen To This: Accessories

Posted by: dgoldring on Nov 09 2008

This is just a quick follow up to the hardware post in this series.  In that post, we looked at the hardware and some pseudo-unboxings.  Well, just to finish off the unboxing theme, I thought we could take a quick look at what else comes in the boxes.  And it is not much: a sync charge cable, some headphones, and various other sundry manuals.  Not much controversy there…or so you might think.

All six of these players include a sync-charge cable.  What is notable here is that none of them include an AC adaptor.  They all include a cable which connects to the USB port on your computer.  Most of these can be used with any Ac adaptor, such as the Lil Sync Penguin from PPC Techs.  I did note, however, that the Zune required more power than the Penguin could offer.  As such, it only charged when connected to the computer. 

The thing that drove me crazy here (as much as you can be driven crazy by sync-charge cables) was that they are all different.  six players and six different connections.  This probably will not mean much when you choose only one and stick with it, but I have to say, when you are switching between six different players, it really can drive you just about mad.  I really do wish that more device manufacturers would adopt mini USB as the universal connection which it was intended to be (only the Creative Zen X-fi uses mini USB.)

The other thing you will find in each of these boxes are headphones.  Now, I blame the iPod for one of the most unfortunate turn of events in this arena (and you thought all headphones were made alike.)  Thanks to the iPod, out-of-the-ear buds became the standard in headphones included with many media players.  For me, this typically means the included headphones never even make it out of the package.  They are just uncomfortable and generally do not offer great sound quality. 

Unfortunately, many companies have followed the lead offered by the iPod, and you will find this style of headphone included with both the Zune and Sansa, along with (obviously) the iPod.  Though I do have to give the Zune credit for offering a variety of colored covers (above) which you can use to personalize the look of your headphones.

The better alternative, which is finally becoming more standard among media players, are the noise isolating in-ear buds.  Your will find these included with the Sony (shown, above), Creative Zen, and Samsung. 

Additionally, the Sony also include a second pair of headphones.  These are over the ear headphones which can utilize the Bluetooth radio to connect wirelessly with the Sony player.  I thought this was a great inclusion, and was quite surprised to find that the Samsung – the only other player to offer Bluetooth connectivity – did not include Bluetooth headphones.

Otherwise, all of the players included the expected manuals, quick start guides, and software CD’s.  Really, there were no surprises in any of these packages. 

Though, it is interesting to look at the different ways each company packaged the accessories.  For the most part, the companies which included the iPod style outer-ear-buds, buried the headphones deep within the package.  Those which included the more impressive in-ear-buds, on the other hand, highlighted them by displaying them so they could be seen from outside the package (like the Creative Zen X-fi, shown above.)

Stay tuned, because the preliminaries are out of the way, and it is time to start getting into how each of these players perform.  Later on this month, we will take a look at the controls and how they compare across the various players.  And before the end of the year, we’ll take a look at the various menus, as well as loading media onto the players.  So stay tuned…and Listed to This…

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