Tiny MP3 players

Jasmine France, Senior Associate Editor May 20, 2008

Flash-based MP3 players are taking over the marketplace. Unlike their hard-drive-based counterparts, flash MP3 players have no moving parts, affording them entirely skip-free playback and, in most cases, a long battery life. Also, flash chips are tiny, meaning the players that use them can be small to the point of ridiculousness. Luckily, most manufacturers realize that there is such a thing as too small, so we had no trouble finding a collection of manageable MP3 players that won't take up valuable space in a briefcase, a backpack, a purse, or a pocket. And although each measures less than 2 cubic inches, all of them offer at least 2GB of memory, which is enough to hold about 500 songs or 32 hours' worth of music.

The winner in terms of tininess? The Apple iPod Shuffle at 0.64 cubic inch. Next comes the MobiBlu Cube at 1 cubic inch, then the Creative Zen Stone Plus at 1.1 cubic inch. The sporty Sansa Clip measures 1.5 cubic inches, while the ultrathin iPod Nano comes in at a respectable 1.4 cubic inches, which is an impressive 5.7GB per inch for the 8GB model. Finally, there's the comparatively bulky Creative Zen V Plus at 1.95 cubic inches, but considering that that's a whopping 8.2GB per inch for the 16GB model, we think it's worthy of a spot on the list.

More Resources

Editors' top MP3 players,

Editors' top headphones,

MP3 Insider podcast,

Digital music blog