What happened to all the MP3 players? It looks like they’ve all been swallowed up by the portable media player brigade. Not that we’re complaining, we love getting all handsy with a touchscreen PMP. Which is why we’ve compiled a list of our five favourite touchscreen-toting PMPs…
1. Sony X-Series Walkman – best for sound quality (From £199)
Sony’s attempt to get back on top of the portable music player pile, the X-Series Walkman has a three-inch OLED touchscreen that’s as stunning to look at as it is to use. Available in 16GB or 32GB flavours it’s plenty big enough for hearty music collections and, as you’d expect from Sony, its sound kicks rivals’ posteriors into next week. The built-in noise-cancellation is a boon, shame it’ll only work with Sony cans. But it’s got plenty of extras, including the ability to work with BBC iPlayer.
2. Apple iPod Touch – best all-rounder (From £165)
Essentially an iPhone without the phone, the iPod Touch comes in 8GB, 16GB and 32GB capacities and is as smooth as Action Man’s rude bits. The largest capacity Touch can hold a whopping 7,000 tunes. The 3.5-inch touch screen might not be as delicious as the X-Series’ OLED offering, but thanks to multi-touch and an unrivalled user-interface, the iPod Touch is top of the pile when it comes to touch PMPs.
Sony X Series Walkman hands-on video
3. Cowon iAudio S9 – best for OLED on a budget (From £169)
The Cowon iAudio S9 comes in the same capacities as the iPod Touch (8, 16 and 32GB), but unlike the Touch, the S9 has an OLED screen, and it’s a doozy. Sound quality is as equally pleasing to the ears as the OLED touch screen is to your eyes, beating Apple’s sound quality hands-down (if not quite up there with the Sony X-Series). Where the S9 falls down, though, is its inability to play DRM or AAC files, or MPEG-4 or H.264 video clips. There’s also a lack of web browser. Still, a more affordable OLED offering than the X-Series.
4. Archos 5 – best for capacity (£230)
Blowing its rivals out the water (in a capacity sense at least), the Archos 5 has a whopping 250GB hard drive that will hold 300 movies (or one Kevin Costner epic), 145,000 songs or literally millions of photos. The sizeable 4.8-inch touchscreen is a breeze to use too, although not as user-friendly as the Touch, but its size makes watching movies a much more pleasant than on its rivals. But with that large screen comes a larger weight too, and this tubby PMP tops out the scales at 300g.
5. Samsung P3 – best for bargain hunters (From £110)
Another sturdy PMP offering, the Samsung P3 looks like it’d be a Touch rival, with its three-inch touch screen. But take a look at its price (£110 for 8GB and £150 for 16GB) and you realise that this is more in the nano’s market. Granted the capacitive touchscreen’s not as friendly as the others here, but you almost wouldn’t expect it to be for the price. Apart from audio and video playback the P3 also supports JPEG, PNG and BMP image files, has a non-RDS FM radio with a record facility, a voice recorder and stereo Bluetooth. Unfortunately it lacks Wi-Fi and a web browser. That said it does go very LOUD!
