iPod Rivals: Do Their Own Renditions of Popular Music Player

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Apple Computer Inc.’s lovely little music player dominates the market, and its design and simplicity make it hard to beat.

But let’s face it – the iPod is the luxury car of hard-drive music players. You pay as much for style as you do for function. The recently upgraded versions cost $300 for 20 gigabytes and $400 for 40 gigabytes.

You can buy a competing product that plays music just as well, sacrificing only a little user-friendliness and the cachet created by Apple’s smart marketing. And you’ll get some added features that the iPod doesn’t have.

We reviewed four iPod challengers to see how they stacked up against the big kahuna.

Some devices came with music-organizing software designed by or developed in cooperation with the manufacturer. Their software does most of the things Apple’s iTunes software does for the iPod – organizing playlists, editing song information, etc. – but iTunes is still the easiest and most pleasurable to use.

Apple’s recent redesign of the iPod helped it catch up in some areas where rivals were pulling ahead, especially in battery life. The newest iPod can chug along for about 12 hours, compared with eight in the previous generation.

Apple’s classic scroll wheel, which allows you to browse through music files by circling your thumb around the device’s surface, continues to be one of its best features. And Apple added a "shuffle songs" option to its main menu in a nod to one of users’ favorite ways to listen to music.

We’ve included the manufacturer’s suggested price for each iPod competitor, though many can be had for much less. And we’ve quoted the manufacturer’s claims on battery life, which are usually slightly longer than what users experience in the real world.

Philips HDD120 Recording Audio Jukebox

Size: 20 gigabytes

Price: $300

Battery life: 10 hours

Design: Black and sleek, with a glowing white LCD display. It would have fit perfectly on "Knight Rider."

Browsing mechanism: Instead of a fancy scroll wheel, Philips goes with two buttons, one for up, one for down. No need to get flashy.

Other buttons: Those browsing buttons double as the forward and back buttons. There’s another button for playing and selecting options and another for going to the previous menu. A side button takes you to the main menu, and another side button lets you go straight to the library.

Pros: The HDD120 has a built-in recording function. And like the iPod, it has a shuffle button located conveniently in the main menu.

Cons: The HDD120 won’t work with other Windows-based music-organizing software, and you can’t drag and drop music to the device and play it. What’s worse, Philips’ software is onerous, requiring lots of clicks to input information about each song.

Can it beat the iPod?: Not even close, thanks to that clunky software. But the recording feature is a plus.

Creative Zen Touch

Size: 20 gigabytes

Price: $300

Battery life: 24 hours

Design: Looks like a blocky iPod with angular edges.

Browsing mechanism: The Zen Touch uses a vertical scroll pad. Slide your thumb up and down the pad to browse, and click the button at the device’s center to make a selection.

Other buttons: The Zen Touch makes it easy to shuffle songs with a "random" button on its face. Play, back, forward and menu buttons are stacked vertically on the sides.

Pros: You can search for a song, artist or album by alphabetical order. Just click the center button, select "Find," and scroll. The iPod could use this. The Zen Touch gives you more options than the iPod for building playlists on the go.

Cons: The sensitive scroll pad lies just below the center button, so you must be careful not to touch it when you press the button. Adjust the pad’s sensitivity if that causes you trouble.

Can it beat the iPod? Maybe. Besides the shuffle button and the touch pad, the Zen Touch offers little that other iPod rivals haven’t done.

Dell Digital Jukebox

Size: 15 or 20 gigabytes

Price: $200 or $280

Battery life: 16 hours

Design: Rectangular and slightly curved around the edges like the iPod, but wider, fatter and not nearly as pretty. The device looks busy with two tones of silver and a black band around its edge. And it has a funny-looking bulge in its center, although that bulge is important.

Browsing mechanism: The bulge houses a mechanical barrel. Roll it up or down to browse, then press it in to select a song. That might seem clunky compared to the iPod’s scroll wheel, but it actually works pretty well. The up and down motion feels more natural than moving your thumb in a circle.

Other buttons: Nice and simple – play, forward, back, previous menu and home are on the front. Two volume buttons and a microphone button for recording are on the side.

Pros: The Dell uses an operating system very similar to Creative’s, so it has many of the same features, including browsing by the alphabet.

Cons: It’s an ugly duckling next to the iPod.

Can it beat the iPod? Yes, if you prefer function over form. The scroll barrel is extremely user-friendly, and the recording feature is easy to use.

Rio Karma

Size: 20 gigabytes

Price: $300

Battery life: 15 hours

Design: Square and black, with a curve on the right side designed for your thumb and forefinger to fit on the controls. Its tiny size and relatively big screen make it look like a pager.

Browsing mechanism: A dial at the top right corner scrolls through songs. You can cradle the device in your fingers and scroll with your thumb or your forefinger.

Other buttons: The Rio uses a joystick that you push up to play, right to fast-forward, etc. A separate button lets you go to the previous menu, and two side buttons handle volume.

Pros: The Karma is small. It’ll fit in your pocket even if your pants are tight. It has a very user-friendly browsing system, displaying every song in one column and showing your place in the alphabet in the other. The Karma also has cool shuffling features that automatically make themed playlists for you.

Cons: The scroll dial is great when the Karma is in your hand, but it’s a pain when it’s docked next to the computer. It’s just difficult to wrap your hand around it that way.

Can it beat the iPod? Yes, if you’re more of an on-the-go listener than a docking-station listener.

(c) 2004, The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.