Portable Video Player Comparison Matrix

Wed, Feb 27, 2008 (Technology)

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:

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):

Sony PSP Using GPS

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.

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This post was written by:

Riyad Kalla - who has written 1758 posts on The “Break it Down” Blog.

"Ultimately I just want to provide a resource that folks find useful."

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6 Responses to “Portable Video Player Comparison Matrix”

  1. manny Says:

    got a psp for media but

    basically i also needed it for gaming :)

    Reply

  2. Riyad Kalla Says:

    Yea that was exactly my hangup… I didn’t need a portable gaming device, but if I did, the PSP hands-down wins.

    Reply

  3. Rick Says:

    >>and the iTouch certainly had a lot more memory cause it was disk based (not flash based).

    Do you mean the iPod Touch? It too is flash based, not disk.

    Reply

  4. Riyad Kalla Says:

    Doh, Rick you are right. I did mean the iPod touch and you are correct. I don’t know why I thought it was disk-based. I’ll update the post.

    Thx!

    Reply

  5. hong Says:

    I’ve got psp and believe me after you have psp you will know that at least it does much than iphone. also camera add-on and gps that’s all you need while iphone use up to more than twice the price and doesn’t even capture video(sorry I’m not good at english)

    Reply

  6. Editor Says:

    hong,

    The PSP doesn’t capture video either does it? Also which GPS addon do you have for the PSP?

    Reply

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