You see them everywhere, everyone has one, but what makes them so great? They are popular, sleek, and have come to be considered by the average consumer the best mp3 Player/video player around. But the bottom line is, they are nowhere near the best mp3 or portable movie player, in fact, far from. The video iPod offers next to no features that are above what you would expect from a portable mp3 player. You can play and watch movies on your iPod, but that's about it, so why would you buy an iPod if that's all your getting? There are so many other devices that offer much much more for around the same price. I decided to buy a Creative Zen Vision M a few months back and so far have been delighted by my choice.
The major reason I bought a Zen instead of an iPod was because you don't need to convert movies to mp4 format. The video iPod requires you to convert all of your movies to mp4 format or they will not play on your iPod. 99% of the movies you will come across are in mpg or AVI format so you need to convert most movies. My Zen, as well as Zunes and some other mp3/video players don't require you to do this which saves you a ton of time and hassle.
Another reason you should choose a different mp3 player is because the iPod has no radio. I was under the impression that this was a fairly standard feature for portable music players since the last three out of four mp3 players I've owned had one. iPods unfortunately do not have built in radios. My Zen even allows me to record radio, so if I hear a song I like on the radio I can hit record and it will be saved into my music library, then I can listen to it whenever I want and I can also transfer it to my computer.
The ability to make your iPod your own is another thing I guess Apple forgot about when developing the iPod. All iPods have the same plain background, you can't change your background or display menu as you can with many other mp3 players. With my Zen there are like 6 preset themes, each different theme has a different background image, different colored scroll bars and the other display settings are all different colors that match the theme making it look very nice. You can also set any image as your background, this includes images you uploaded from your computer. I currently have a picture of a city meeting an ocean at night with a sailboat and it looks very nice with the black theme.
These are just a few of the reasons why you should at least consider getting a different mp3 player like a zen or zune instead of an iPod. I'm not saying there is nothing wrong with iPods, they are great for a lot of people, all I'm saying is why settle for an iPod when there are so many better options available. Hope this article helped you
