Jul 27, 2006 8:46 am US/Eastern
Tech Styles: iPod Replacements?
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
In just under five years, the iPod has gone from a music player for Mac users to nearly 80 percent of the portable music player market. It's practically the standard for digital music. But there are plenty of other devices taking up the other 20 percent of the market, some with unique features.
For starters, all the players we looked at have a built-in FM radio tuner -- something you can add to the iPod, but at a price of around $30 extra.
Also, none of the players we looked at can access Apple's iTunes music store. You instead would purchase music from Yahoo, Rhapsody and the Microsoft music store.
iRiver ClixThe iRiver Clix is a pint-sized player with a unique user interface. It can show photos and playback video on the 2-inch color screen and will hold more than 1,000 of your favorite tunes. Interacting with the device is as simple as clicking the face of the player. It rocks up and down, left and right. That will leave behind plenty of fingerprints, but it's intuitive. The interface is polished and easy to use.
--Price: $200
Creative Zen VisionThe Creative Zen Vision is the closest match to the iPod Video. It also shows photos and plays back video, and includes a voice recorder -- handy for students looking to record their college lectures, or folks who like to speak their mind for later playback. The Zen had a bright and colorful screen (the best screen of the bunch) and interacting was very similar to the iPod. It has a touch-sensitive slider on the front that lets you interact with the menus. The model we looked at (a 30 GB model) holds hours of video, thousands of photos and about 15,000 of your favorite tunes.
--Price: $300
Creative Zen VThe pint-sized Zen V is about the size of an 18-stick pack of gum. The tiny color screen will let you view photos, which is like looking through someone's stamp collection. The screen is so tiny -- though it's bright and colorful -- it might be too small for aging eyes. The simplified interface and lightweight will make it a good player for runners. The Zen V will hold a few thousand songs and a few hundred of your photos.
--Price: $150
MobiBlue DHH-200MobiBlue's DHH-200 is the newest of the bunch. The interface seemed a little slow when moving through it and also pretty basic (Remember DOS? How about Windows before 1995?). It handled video playback surprisingly well, and the 2-inch color screen displayed photos nicely. It has what they call a "Joy Wheel" to interact with the device and navigate menus, but it felt cheap and clunky.
--Price: $230
(© MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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