• The basics
• Pros and cons of MP3 players
• Solid state players
• Mini hard drive-based players
• Regular hard drive-based players
• The big issues
• Other considerations
• Weighing up the options

Mini hard drive-based players

Micro hard disks are small, one inch versions of their larger compatriots, thus making them ideal for use in portable music players. They range in storage capacity between 1GB and 20GB. However, with the price of flash memory continuing to drop and the capacities continuing to rise, micro hard disk-based products are becoming less and less prevalent. There are still a handful of models on the market, such as Creative's Zen Micro Photo and Sony's NW-A1200, but for the most part flash memory players fill this niche now.

They're useful because at between 100 and 150g, they're not quite as big as a full-sized hard disk player, but can also act as a medium-capacity external storage drive. Arguably, they can also have some of the best battery life available.

Although you'll want to get a bit of extra capacity for your MP3 collection to grow in the future, try and make sure that you don't pay for an extreme amount of extra space you're never likely to use.