Today, MP3 products have changed from luxury goods to mass consumer goods. The rise of domestic brands has greatly lowered the threshold for people to buy MP3, and the increasingly rich functions have enhanced the market appeal of MP3. After adding the functions of traditional repeater and interview machine, MP3 has become a popular product favored by students.

Today's MP3 products can only be described as diverse, and there are also countless manufacturers of such products. Therefore, the gap between the quality and price of the same type of products has become very obvious. Therefore, it is easy to fall into consumer misunderstandings when purchasing MP3 players, leading to unpleasant experiences and too much waste. Especially student consumers, their control over themselves is even weaker and they are easily affected by the words of merchants and other students. Therefore, the editor has drawn four prohibited lines for student consumers to buy MP3, and I hope students will pay attention to them.

Only “price” matters, the more expensive the better

Speaking of this, we have to talk about the trend of comparison on campus, although all aspects of this unhealthy trend are against Pressure after pressure, tube after tube, but still no match for the vanity in the hearts of some students. Therefore, when they buy MP3 players, as long as the price is high, they don't care about anything else. If you ask him, he will also tell you "you get what you pay for", "cheap goods are not good" and other "wise words".

It is true that the price reflects the quality and functionality of such products to some extent, but this situation cannot be generalized. In fact, the basic technology of products such as MP3 is very mature, and its cost has been fixed in terms of process. The price gap should be minimal if the same type, same function and same quality are used. The reason why there is such a big price gap between different brands is mainly due to the high price strategy of manufacturers when they go on the market, market positioning and unique production molds. Therefore, it is not recommended that students buy the latest MP3 and those flashy products just for temporary vanity. Because the prices of these products will be significantly reduced in a short period of time, sometimes as much as 50%, making you regret it and wasting your parents' hard-earned money.

It should also be emphasized that those single-mold products are not included in the high price range due to their production cost limitations and the uniqueness of the mold. However, these MP3 products are still suitable for people with certain financial strength to buy.

The only thing that matters is "price", but the cheaper the better

This is another extreme. As long as it is cheap, anything will do. However, there is not much behind this cheap mask. Good quality. On average, the current cost of a 128-megabyte MP3 player can be calculated as follows: 220 yuan for the flash memory chip, 60 yuan for the control chip, and about 30 yuan for other assembly costs. The minimum production cost of an MP3 player is at least 310 yuan, including tax. The actual sales cost of payment and other expenses should be around 350 yuan. If you see a 128MB MP3 for less than 300 yuan, you should consider what it is made of.

However, there is such a product on the market, and it is favored by some students. What are these products made of? Using the FLASH chip removed from the scrapped MP3, inferior circuit boards, rough manual welding, and tax evasion, a 128MB MP3 worth more than 200 yuan was produced. For me, let alone buying and using such MP3s, I don’t even look at them, unless some merchants sell them on clearance, then that’s another matter.

I would like to advise those students who are greedy for cheap. Good quality and low price are not always available. At least you should consider whether the price is reasonable. Don't buy something only to have it break within two days, or have inferior headphones hurt your ears only to regret it later.

Buy a casket for a pearl, only pay attention to additional functions

Nowadays, MP3 has more and more functions, including playback, recording, alarm, and karaoke. Integrated into a small MP3. Some students often don't care about the quality and actual use of MP3, but consider how many functions the MP3 has and use this to decide whether to buy it.

What are the main functions of MP3, listening to music, listening to English, and mobile storage. Other functions should be put aside for the time being, knowing that other functions are just MP3 embellishments. If you use MP3 to sing karaoke on its small screen on the street, rely on it to record important courses and meetings, or use it to wake you up, the result will be either a comedy or a tragedy.

The functions are enough. If you want to get more, you have to pay more. Practicality and ease of use are the real way to buy.

Size determines everything

When buying MP3 players, some merchants will show you how compact and easy to carry the product is when recommending products. For some students, especially girls, You will be excited and even pay for it on the spot.

There is nothing wrong with the compactness of MP3, it is a reflection of technological progress. But everything has a limit, and exceeding this limit will cause you unexpected trouble. Making MP3 so small means that other functions will inevitably be somewhat reduced. For example, it lacks a repeat function and LCD panel, shortens the playback time, uses a non-replaceable lithium battery, and uses a fragile plastic casing. The lack of these aspects will bring some trouble to everyone and shorten the service life of MP3 in some cases.

This type of MP3 is not suitable for most student consumers, and its simplification of functions will directly affect your study and use. However, these products are still a good choice for those fashionable people who only listen to music.

In fact, there are many misconceptions about consumption in actual purchases. They are not listed this time. The editor feels very guilty and tries his best to elaborate on them in the following article. I hope that students will be able to choose and use MP3 well after school starts.

How to choose a good MP3 player and what should you pay attention to when purchasing? Let’s take a look below.

1. Appearance:

At present, MP3 players on the market have various shapes and appearances, including alternative, traditional, silver, black, red, purple... it seems. Each brand has several products that are similar in shape to other brands, so it is difficult to choose. You can only rely on your own feelings. However, the appearance of a product can largely determine its workmanship. Products with poor feel and poor color will not have much better overall workmanship. At present, most of the casings of MP3 products are made of ABS engineering plastics, while a small number of higher-end products are made of metal, and the surface is mostly made of baking paint.

2.LCD display screen:

Popular MP3 players nowadays all have LCD screen displays, which makes operation more intuitive and convenient. Of course, all LCD screens have backlights, and the current color of the backlights is mostly blue. At present, there are also colorful displays on the market, but they are generally more expensive, consume more power, and have little practical value. If you are not very fashion-conscious and have money in your pocket, you can still put it down. , don’t think about it. There are also some MP3 products on the market that do not have LCD screen displays, so many functions cannot be implemented and operation is inconvenient, but the price is lower.

3. Supported languages:

For products with LCD screens, English display is the most common, but of course friends hope to see simple and clear Chinese menus . The so-called support for ID3 means that the song title and artist can be displayed in Chinese. But at present, whether they are imported or domestic products, most MP3s can only display song titles in Chinese, but the menus and lyrics are still in English. Especially the original imported products, almost none support the display of Chinese lyrics.

4. Memory capacity:

The capacity of an MP3’s built-in flash memory should be the parameter that friends pay most attention to. It's like a computer's hard drive, which determines how many files you can store.

From the early 16MB, 32MB, to the current 64MB, 128MB, 256MB and a few 512MB, there are even ultra-large capacity hard drive MP3s. The development of MP3 will move towards larger memory capacity. But the current market leading product is still 128MB. Generally speaking, the 128Kbps compression rate MP3 we often use takes up about 3-5MB of space per song. With the current mainstream 128MB memory, about 30 songs can be stored, which should be enough to meet the needs of friends. Besides, with the current MP3 operating system, there are too many songs stored and it is very troublesome to search them. So if you don’t have much money in your pocket, it is better not to choose a product with too large capacity. In the worst case, you can just update the songs frequently.

5. Supported formats:

MP3 format is the most commonly used, it supports a sampling rate of 44.1KHz, and the usable bit rate is generally 8-256Kbps. Different MP3 products have different support ranges for sampling rate and bit rate. Of course, the wider the supported range, the better. For sampling rate, better products can support up to 48KHz. For dynamic encoding VBR, the file size can be made smaller with the same sound quality, but some machines cannot support it.

WMA is a format promoted by Microsoft, with a compression rate generally between 5-192Kbps. Under the same sound quality, WMA can be smaller than MP3 format files, so an MP3 player with this function is equivalent to increasing its memory capacity in disguise. I would also like to remind my friends that when using the WMP that comes with Windows to compress files, you need to remove the copyright protection option, otherwise the compressed WMA files cannot be played on MP3; WMA files downloaded from the Internet are encrypted, so Players that support WMA may not be able to play the video.

Other formats, such as ASF, WAV, etc., are not as easy to use as MP3 and WMA formats. From a practical point of view, they are dispensable.

6. FM frequency modulation function:

In order to improve the function, many MP3 products on the market have developed FM frequency modulation function in the machine, which can receive FM frequency modulation programs received by ordinary radios. , and can preset multiple radio stations and even record the music in the radio station. This is a very good creation for friends who like to listen to radio programs, but for users who are not interested in listening to radio, there is no need to choose a much more expensive MP3 with FM function.

7. EQ settings:

This is the sound effect setting. Almost every product will have several preset sound effect settings, such as normal, rock, jazz, pop, and classical. Some MP3s also support custom sound effect settings, which users can customize according to their own preferences. But for products without LCD screens, these EQ settings almost do not exist, and there is only a sound effect mode that is solidified by itself. This seems a bit cruel to some friends who are particularly loyal to personalized music effects.

8. System program:

MP3 system program is very important for the machine. It can solve all software problems during the use of MP3 and is important for the stability of the system. will also play a vital role. In addition, some MP3 products can solve some bugs or add some new functions through firmware upgrades, so it would be best if they can support this function. Of course, this has a lot to do with the manufacturer's firmware development speed.

9. Frequency response range:

The sound frequency range that the human ear can hear is 20-20000Hz. Sounds below 20Hz and above 20KHz cannot be distinguished by the human ear. came out. However, the frequency response range is between 50Hz and 18KHz, which should be enough. Current MP3s should be able to reach this frequency response range. However, frequency response range and sampling rate are different, so don’t confuse them.

10. Signal-to-noise ratio:

The signal-to-noise ratio is the ratio between the maximum undistorted sound signal intensity generated by the sound source and the intensity of the noise emitted at the same time, usually expressed in "SNR" or " "S/N" means it is an important parameter for measuring sound-producing equipment such as speakers and headphones. For MP3, it is also a very critical parameter. "Signal-to-noise ratio" is generally measured in decibels (dB). The higher the signal-to-noise ratio, the better the effect of the audio equipment. Generally speaking, at least choose a product with a signal-to-noise ratio above 60dB. However, there is currently no formal testing organization to evaluate the signal-to-noise ratio of products, so some inferior MP3 product descriptions also have high signal-to-noise ratios marked on them. This can only be verified with your own ears. If you can hear an obvious "buzzing" or "hissing" current-like sound when MP3 is not playing any audio signal, it means that the signal-to-noise ratio of the machine is too low and it is not suitable for purchase.

11. Recording function:

Most of the current MP3 products have recording functions, which include recording external sounds, recording FM programs, transcribing sounds from other devices such as CDs. The effect of directly recording external sounds is not very ideal at present; transcribing sounds played by other devices also has great effect flaws. At present, MP3s that can be recorded mostly use MP3 and WMA formats, but their encoding computing power is not powerful and the sound effect is not very good; some use ADPCM format, which is a complex encoding format, and the sound quality is not good, but It can make the file size smaller, and recording in this format can store recording information for a longer period of time.

12. Repeat function:

In order to cater to student users who learn foreign languages, MP3 manufacturers have set up a repeat function in the machine to support simple repeat between two points A-B. This is more necessary for student users.

13. Mobile storage:

Current MP3 players can be used as mobile storage to facilitate users to move files. Moreover, almost all MP3s no longer require drivers (except Win 98), and only a few MP3s require the use of their own management programs to upload and download files between the MP3 player and the computer.

14. Interface:

The early products that used serial ports are no longer seen. Current MP3s all use USB interfaces, which have fast transmission rates and support hot plugging. But most of the interfaces used for MP3 are USB1.1 interfaces, and USB2.0 interfaces are rarely seen. There are also some special uses of the 1394 interface, which are extremely rare.

15. Battery:

In order to make the MP3 slimmer, many manufacturers build lithium batteries into MP3 players and charge them through the USB interface. Although this saves the cost of buying batteries, in many cases the battery is too low to be used because it is not charged for a long time, especially during long journeys. This situation is embarrassing. MP3 products that use dry batteries are slightly larger in size, but the batteries can be replaced at any time, ensuring that you can enjoy music anytime and anywhere without power restrictions (after all, dry batteries are sold everywhere). When it comes to batteries, we cannot fail to mention the issue of MP3 power consumption. Many MP3 players claim how long a AAA battery can be used. These are all tested using specific batteries in specific usage environments. However, the data provided by some manufacturers is too watery and may even be suspected of false reporting. Friends can measure it themselves after purchasing. If they find products that consume too much power, they can ask for replacement.

When purchasing an MP3 player, as long as you pay attention to the above 15 aspects, coupled with your friends' care and patience, I believe you will be able to choose a good MP3 player. In addition, during the summer, many manufacturers are carrying out promotional activities, and the prices are much lower than usual. This is a normal phenomenon. Friends who want to buy MP3 may wish to visit major electronic cities. I hope you can choose the product you like.