For IPod, 6 Flavors of Flattery
By DAVID POGUE
Published: February 12, 2004
Stuart Goldenberg
EVEN this early in the campaign, the battle for the popular vote is really heating up; the incumbent is being challenged by lesser-known candidates from all over the country. The winner will be the candidate with the best balance of new ideas and appealing looks - and battery life.
I am referring, of course, to the battle for supremacy among portable music players.
So far, Apple's iPod is by far the best seller among high-capacity players. You can't stand in a public place without seeing a pair of those telltale white earbud cords pass by; for once in its life, Apple gets to find out what it's like to be Microsoft. The iPod's success has spawned an entire industry of iPod cases, iPod accessories, iPod software - and now, inevitably, iPod imitators.
The rivals come from electronics makers (Samsung) and from fellow computer makers (Dell, Gateway), as well as from veteran music-player makers (Rio, Creative Labs, iRiver).
Most have the familiar iPod ingredients: a screen, a tiny hard drive and a rechargeable battery, all packed into a rectangular case and accompanied by earbuds. Most come with jukebox software that loads your collection of music files - which you've either downloaded or "ripped" from music CD's - onto the player over a U.S.B. 2.0 cable.
The other notable feature of these competitors is a marketing message that's either "just like the iPod, only cheaper" or "just like the iPod, only better."
Now, you're a busy person, so here's the gist: most of these rivals are cheaper - usually $100 less. But "better" is another story. The iPod is still smaller, more attractive and more thoughtfully designed than any of the upstarts.
It's also much more than just a music player. The iPod can also display your calendar and address book, serve as a text reader and alarm clock, help you pass the time with a suite of games, and so on. And that's before you tap into the universe of add-on shareware programs. (One intriguing example is iSpeak It for the Mac, which converts any text file, Web page or Microsoft Word document into a spoken-word soundtrack, using synthesized voices.)
Even so, certain audiences will prefer the iPod alternatives. For many people these days, "cheaper" is better than "better." Maybe you crave this bell or that whistle that the iPod lacks - a built-in FM radio, say, or a built-in microphone. Or maybe your Windows PC doesn't have Windows 2000 or XP - a requirement for iTunes, the iPod's companion software. (The iPod works with both Mac and Windows; most of the rivals are Windows-only.)
Furthermore, if you want to shop at one of those $1-a-song music Web sites, buying an iPod pretty much limits you to Apple's iTunes music store. (The Apple store's AAC files play only on the iPod. The other stores, like Napster and Musicmatch, deliver WMA files that work on any player except the iPod.) Of course, that's like being "forced" to drive a Lexus or "limited" to staying at the Beverly Hills Four Seasons, but you get the point.
Finally, most of the iPods-in-training can run 13 to 16 hours per charge (manufacturers' estimates), compared with the iPod's eight. That may be important if you routinely commute from, say, New York to Tokyo, although bigger batteries add bulk.
If cost is your main concern, you'll find that the standout feature of Dell's cleanly designed, very easy-to-use DJ 15 player is its price: $250 for the 15-gigabyte model, $300 for the 20. For now, Dell is even offering an additional 10 percent off at dell.com. (The corresponding iPods cost $300 and $400.)
Unfortunately, the Dell feels half-baked, especially in comparison with the highly polished iPod. For example, it's the only player that falls silent when you try to fast-forward or rewind through a song. Incredibly, you can't make it play your entire music collection, beginning to end. And although it has a microphone for low-quality voice notes, the Dell offers no way to copy such recordings back to your PC for transcription or sending to friends. It's a feature in search of a purpose. (Dell says it will fix the latter two glitches later in a revamped player this March.)
Like the Dell, Gateway's 20-gigabyte DMP X20 ($300) is bigger and heavier than the iPod. It features the industry's biggest screen (2.5 inches diagonally); a microphone like the Dell's; and an FM radio, which is a logical and welcome enhancement to a music player. ("Yes, yes, I know 5,000 songs fit on here - but what am I supposed to listen to after that?")
The Gateway and the iPod are also the only players in this derby that can play digital "books on tape" from Audible.com.
But here again, some of these improvements over the iPod seem to have been designed more for the brochure than for the customer. Why on earth, for example, can't you record songs off the radio? (You can on the Samsung YP-910 GS player, and it's a great way to expand your music collection legally.) And to load up the Gateway, it's too bad you have to use plain old Windows Media Player, a clunky program not particularly suited to the task - and one with no integrated online music store.
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The Samsung ($300), by contrast, was designed to sync with the Napster 2.0 $1-a-song service. Unfortunately, the Napster jukebox software is no iTunes; it offers, for example, no way to "rip" your CD's into audio files for loading onto your player.
When it comes to bonus features, the Samsung gets an A for effort. It can memorize 44 FM stations as presets; record from the radio; and, when you attach the included antenna stick, it can even "broadcast'' its music to an unused FM frequency on your home or car stereo. (Alas, interference prevents this kind of transmitter from working very well, regardless of the player.)
Ultimately, though, the Samsung is just too eccentric. Its button layout is random and illogical, its plastic case feels cheap, and the large neon-blue lights that surround its control pad are just as tacky as those light-up frames people install on their license plates.
Speaking of vehicles, the Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra is the sport-utility truck of MP3 players. At this moment, it's the only player available in a 60-gigabyte model ($400). That's enough to hold 900 hours of WMA-encoded music - an important point if you're selected for the first manned mission to Mars. (To make that prospect even more realistic, Creative Labs blessed this model with a removable battery, so you can pack a bunch of spares in your astro-luggage.)
Unfortunately, the Zen Xtra is truck-like in a bad way, too. At 4.4 by 3.0 by 0.9 inches and nearly half a pound, it fits in your hand like a romance novel dipped in lead. Yet for all that mass, it has no microphone, radio or Record button. And there's no Hold switch; to prevent the player from getting powered on accidentally in your purse or pocket, you have to burrow into a menu command.
Now, most of these machines fall short because their designers have tried to mimic the iPod without fully understanding its appeal. Two of the players, however, exhibit personalities and fresh approaches all their own.
One is the black metal-clad iPod-size iRiver iHP-i20. The price is the same as the iPod's ($400 for 20 gigabytes; a 40-gigabyte model costs $500). But you also get an FM radio, a superb built-in voice recorder (with a choice of recording quality and format), an external tie-clip-style mike and two line inputs for recording directly from, say, a CD player or tape deck. Like Apple, Dell, Gateway and Samsung, iRiver provides a wired remote that controls the player in your purse or pocket - but iRiver's remote has a little backlighted screen of its own that identifies the current song.
Any hard-drive-based player can double as an external hard drive for carrying everyday computer data around with you (photos, movies, e-mail, and so on), which gives it a huge advantage over other kinds of music players. The beauty of the iRiver (and the models from Apple, Samsung and Gateway) is that it shows up as a disk icon immediately when plugged into any PC. The other players require you to install special driver software first. Too bad if you've just arrived at the boardroom PC expecting to plug and play, say, your PowerPoint presentation.
The iRiver's crushing disappointment is that it was evidently designed by engineers, for engineers; its menus make the cockpit of a 767 look spartan. More alarming still, it comes with no jukebox software at all; you're expected to drag your music files onto it manually, in Windows Explorer. Techies will love this thing; mere mortals will be aghast.
Although the Rio Karma ($300 for 20 gigabytes) looks nothing like the iPod - it's a thick, brownie-like square - it comes the closest to recreating the iPod's magic. For example, Rio and Creative Labs are the only companies that bothered to duplicate what may be the single most defining and important feature of the iPod: auto-synching. When you connect the player to your PC, it updates itself to mirror the playlists and songs on your PC. That Dell, Gateway, Samsung and iRiver expect you to manage your music collection manually shows just how little they grasp the larger iPod concept.
To charge and load the Karma, you place it in an included docking station; like the iPod's dock, this one can also hook up to your home stereo when you're not on the go. The dock's Ethernet jack even lets you manage the Karma's contents from anywhere on your home or office network. There's no radio, microphone or other gadgetry-not even a remote. But as a dedicated music player, it's pure good Karma.
Apple could have been some character from Greek mythology: blessed with ingenious, culture-changing innovation yet cursed with seeing its ideas co-opted by rivals who wind up making all the money. In the iPod's case, though, none of the companies who lust for some of Apple's pie can deliver the elegance and convenience of Apple's music trinity: iPod, the iTunes software and the iTunes music store.
But if an iPod isn't for you, you could do worse than buying the Dell for its simplicity and economy, the iRiver for its super-geeky feature list or the Rio Karma for its excellent design and compact dimensions. In this election, at least, there can be more than one victor.
E-mail: Pogue@nytimes.com
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