Small, Powerful Audio Players

Media Players: Big-Screen Portables for Watching Movies

Photograph: Marc SimonIf you want to watch TV shows or movies on a handheld device, you'll want more than just an audio player that's capable of playing video. Portable multimedia players are superior for watching video because they have bigger screens.

The largest display on an audio player in this story is the Microsoft Zune's 3-inch LCD. By comparison, the screens on portable multimedia players look huge. The $450 Archos 604 WiFi has a bright, 4.3-inch wide-screen display with a resolution of 480 by 272 pixels (the audio players on our charts top out at 320 by 240 pixels). Video and photos looked very attractive on the bigger screen. Also, the Archos display is a touch screen, handy for selecting photos and scrolling through a slide show. The $499 Wolverine Data ESP 5120 has a 3.6-inch display, but it isn't a wide screen. Images appeared less sharp on its 320-by-240 screen than on the Archos device, and I noticed jagged edges on some objects--but it was still more enjoyable to watch than any of the audio players were.

Movie Downloads, Extra Features

Both the Archos model and the Wolverine device support PlaysForSure, so you can play movies from a compatible video download service, such as CinemaNow or Amazon's Unbox. The selection from these sites is limited, however: At press time CinemaNow offered fewer than 1000 movies for purchase, and Amazon's Unbox listed 1570.

The Archos 604 WiFi's 30GB hard drive is somewhat meager, considering the size of video files. A 50-minute episode of Star Trek that I downloaded from Unbox took up 240MB; the movie Office Space, which runs 90 minutes, used up almost 1.7GB. The Wolverine's much larger 120GB hard drive makes it the better choice for portable backup storage--particularly for photographers, since the device has memory card slots that support seven formats.

The Archos has no card slots but offers wireless connectivity and the Opera browser. It can record TV programs as well, though this requires an optional dock, which costs $80. Also, the 604 WiFi has a kickstand so you can prop it up--on an airplane's food tray, for example.

Eric Butterfield