Time to release your music on an MP3 player which are also known as MP4 players. The clever random mode on an MP3 player shuffles up your songs, playing them randomly. You can also store all your songs on a player small enough to fit in your pocket. But where does your MP3 player hold all your music?

It was common in the past, for MP3 players to use an internal mini hard drive to for data storage. Having a mini hard drive means the MP3 player has lots room to hold music files. The Apple iPod Classic MP3 player has up to 160GB storage and Archos also has players with similar capacity. One of the drawbacks though, of using mini hard drives in MP3 players, is that they make the players more bulky and heavier. They also demand more power to run, so potentially decrease the battery run time.

More recently MP3 player manufactures have started using flash memory to replace mini hard drives. There are now very few MP3 players that use hard drives. Instead they have an inbuilt flash memory chip and often have a slot to hold a second flash memory card, thereby increasing the player’s memory.

There are some important advantages to using flash memory in MP3 players, which have benefited both manufactures and consumers. Flash memory is cheaper, lighter, and smaller than a hard drive, they also use less power, which leads to better battery life; and this means that flash based MP3 players can be much smaller and cheaper than hard drive based models.

Flash memory does have some disadvantages though. The storage capacity is significantly smaller than a hard drive, typically between 8GB – 16GB. The price for additional SD cards can be expensive.

There’s more to an MP3 player than just music. Almost all MP3 players now come with a color display in a range of different sizes. The smallest are usually 1.8 inch and they can be as big as 4.3 inch or 5 inch. This has transformed MP3 players into videos players too. While watching full length movies on 1.8 inch screen may not be practical, it’s still fun to watch short video clips or music videos. The larger screen MP3 players can come with 16:9 ratio screen, and it’s a perfect way to watch movie.

Learn more about MP4 players. Stop by David Morris’s site where you can find out all about anMP4 player and what it can do for you.