Portable MP3 players.(Product Updates)(Evaluation)

WHAT'S NEW

* Prices fall. MP3 players are getting cheaper. Unlike portable CD players, MP3 players--handheld, battery-operated devices--store and play digital music that you've organized on, and downloaded from, a computer. Standard-sized players storing 32 megabytes (MB)--about a half-hour's worth of music recorded at CD-quality setting--now sell for about $100. High-capacity players, which can hold many hours of music in a package the size of a portable CD player, are now nearing $200. Getting the music to your player is more complicated than popping in a CD, however; you'll need a computer to transfer ("rip")music files from a CD and then transfer them to the MP3 player. You'll also need an Internet connection to make the most of this product.

* Formats expand. MP3 is the name of an audio-file format--a way of digitally encoding music. (MP3 stands for Moving Pictures Expert Group 1 Layer 3.) Other formats, such as WMA (Windows Media Audio) also exist. Music-management software provided with new MP3 players--or available free online--is more versatile than before, able to convert a variety of formats from one to another. That's a benefit as new formats are introduced. The players also can play more formats than before.

* Music for a fee appears online. Despite copyright-infringement lawsuits by the music and movie industries, free music-sharing web sites carry on.The sites let users download music files for transfer to MP3 players or recording ("burning") onto CDs. The music industry has responded with subscription-based services that allow you to stream or download music and play it on your computer. (One service, Pressplay, also allows some songs to be "burned" each month, for a higher fee.)

* Total capacity grows. Among standard players, capacity--a combination of built-in and external memory--has increased. More models now provide 64 MB, and a few offer 128 MB. High-capacity players now provide as much as 20 gigabytes (GB). They let you store and carry the equivalent of 300 CDs. The capacity of external memory cards has also increased.

THE TESTS, THE RESULTS

We compared 12 new MP3 players, including 3 new high-capacity players, with 6 previously rated models. Prices ranged from $90 to $400. On most models, the computer processing that turns music into an MP3 file led to slight degradation of the music's quality. Less-than-adequate headphones were a common problem.