You are in the market and you have decided you need more space than a flash drive player will give you, so you have decided on a hard drive player.  Now, the question becomes what am I looking for to decide between the hard drive players?  By the end of this article you will understand how to differentiate the vast expanse of hard drive MP3 players on the market today.

The first step in picking the perfect hard drive player for you is to decide just what you are hoping to get out of the device.  Are you looking for a hard drive player that can hold a few audio books for a long trip?  Are you looking for a hard drive player that can hold your entire music collection?  Or are you just looking for a hard drive player that looks pretty?  Hopefully it’s not the last option or you may want to consider a nice, shiny walkman.

If you are looking for a hard drive player that will hold an audio book or two then one of the more affordable players with a few gigs of memory should do just fine.  If you are looking for something to store your entire music collection on then you need to do a little math.  Currently you can find hard drive players with memory space from 1GB of memory all the way to 60GB of memory, how much do you need?

With a massive music collection you are looking at a pretty high end hard drive player, unless you are willing to weed out all of the songs you don’t want off of every CD.  This takes forever and is strongly discouraged.  It is difficult for some to grasp just how much music you can fit on to each size of hard drive player, but a general rule of thumb is 500 songs per gigabyte.  So 4GB will give you roughly 2,000 songs and 60GB will give you around 30,000 songs.

Finally, decide what types of extras are important to you in a hard drive music player.  Do you want to be able to view photos or watch video?  Would you like to have an FM tuner or recorder?  Is optional data storage important to you?  Is it important for you to have accessories (belt clips and cases, etc.) for your hard drive player?  You may not want any of these, but it is best to choose which you would want because all come with something extra now, might as well have something you will use.