Photograph: Marc SimonYou don't have to go to Apple to get a high-quality MP3 player. It's true that the company's exceptionally well-designed IPod and IPod Mini have become the standard by which all portable players are judged, but they're far from the only game in town.
And there's at least one distinct advantage to avoiding the IPod bandwagon: flexibility. All three players I tested support MP3 and WMA. Most of the major online music stores (aside from Apple's ITunes, which is just about your only online store option if you use an IPod) offer downloads as WMA files. In addition, firmware upgrades for all three players will support Microsoft's new Windows Media Digital Rights Management technology, which will enable users to move subscription-based content from their PCs onto their portable players.
Music in a Flash
Flash drives have no moving parts, so they're ideal for active music fans. Rave-MP's crimson, pager-size AMP 128 weighs a mere 1.8 ounces, and yet it comes with 128MB of flash storage, an FM receiver, a voice and FM recorder, an SD/MMC card slot for additional storage, and an AAA battery.
The device--plus a USB cable, hook-on earphones, a belt clip, and an armband--costs only $99 (a 256MB version runs $129). It sounds like a good deal--and overall, it is.
Accompanying the player is a disc containing free Windows Media Player 9 desktop software for file transfers; but since the device appears as a drive when you use the USB cable to plug it into a PC, I simply dragged and dropped files to my preproduction unit. The AMP 128 player seems ideal for runners: It's so light that I had no trouble adjusting to having it attached to my arm. I loaded 21 MP3 songs onto the device, each encoded at 192 kbps (Rave-MP says that the AMP 128 can accommodate up to 4 hours of WMA tunes encoded at 64 kbps). The unit exhibited strong battery life, turning in 17 hours, 13 minutes of run time on a single alkaline AAA battery.
Still, there are a few things not to like: The AMP 128's construction feels a bit flimsy, and the device takes too long (over 24 seconds) to power up. The reverse-contrast monochrome screen can be hard to see in bright sunlight, and the volume seemed a bit weak, even when set to maximum.
Overall, though, I enjoyed using the AMP 128. And at less than $100, it's a player you won't mind sweating all over.
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