How to Buy an MP3 Player

So you've decided it's time to venture out into the big, scary world of consumer electronics and finally buy yourself one of them fancy gadgets that you can put the music on. But with so many options and all that confusing lingo, where do you begin? Enter this guide on how to buy an MP3 player.

Know the lingo. MP3 stands for MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 encoding, which is nothing but a fancy phrase for music. There's also WMA, which stands for Windows Media Audio, another popular encryption for music. Most MP3 players now support WMA, so you shouldn't have to worry about whether or not your music is compatible with the music player you purchase. Also know the abbreviations for music file size: MB and GB. MB represents megabyte, and GB represents gigabyte; these are nothing but measurements for size, where MB is the smaller of the two (there are 1,000 megabytes in a gigabyte, for comparison).

Second, how much music do you actually have? This is the very first question you have to ask yourself, and nothing else really matters. Most newer MP3 players are boasting tons of storage space with an equally bloated price tag. But do you really need to buy 60GB of hard drive space for your MP3s?

The average person doesn't actually have all that much music, and due to this doesn't need to buy the most expensive MP3 player out there. A small, 512MB or 1GB MP3 player will most likely suffice for most people. This averages out to around 100 to 200 songs, respectively.

The consumer those larger companies are catering to are the tech-savvy crowd, those people who know exactly what they want to buy when they walk into an electronics store. Those 60GB MP3 players are more aimed at people who want to carry around video in their pockets and store 10,000 songs just for the sake of being able to; chances are you're not one of those people if you're reading this.

Honestly, you really don't want to buy an MP3 player for more than $100. This will buy you a nice, name-brand MP3 player that will store all the music you'd ever need for a single trip. The Creative Zen Nano and the up-and-coming Sandisk Sansa m200 series are good examples of what to buy.

Don't let yourself get scammed into paying $300 or more for an MP3 player by some kid who's working commission; know the facts and know what you want to buy when you walk into that store. You'll walk out happy knowing you got what you needed, and only what you needed, and you didn't need any help to buy it from some punk kid.