The “Break it Down” Blog

So I was in the market recently for a portable media player that I wanted to not only use for music but primarily for playing video when I was bored at the gym or traveling on a long domestic flight. After a lot of searching I eventually found a pretty nice Wikipedia page that has a comparison matrix with all the major PMP (portable media players) on it.The matrix has information about supported audio and video formats as well as hardware specifications and dimensions of each device.

I had originally set out to get a Creative Zen Vision:W:

but then read more and more comments and reviews that said the Sony PSP, especially the new PSP Lite (or PSP-2000 series) had a better/brighter screen, supported more formats and did more (since it was a portable gaming device and internet device to some extent):

but the more I looked into the PSP the more comparisons I saw directly with the iPhone. The consensus seemed to be that the PSP had a slightly larger screen, but the quality of both seemed very similar. Also it drove me nuts that the PSP will only use the retarded proprietary Sony Memory Stick format and not a standard like Mini-SD.

The iPhone (and iPod Touch) on the other hand had more memory (but was about 2-3x the price).

Anyway, to make a long story short, I ended up using an iPhone for this purpose and so far I’d give the thing a 9/10. It works great as a media and internet device with the fact that it’s also your phone just being icing on the cake. I’ll try and do an official review here in the next few weeks. I want a bit more time with it though.