cost

size/
weight

battery
life

sound
quality

Cassette walkman

The original portable stereo system. Cassette walkmans allow you to pick up tapes along the way at low cost. They are fairly simple devices so you're less likely to have a fatal breakdown than with a CD player. Some come combined with radios. One drawback is that the sound quality is rather scrappy, although recording your own cassettes on a reasonable system using good tapes (Chrome or Metal) with Dolby C can increase the quality. If you want a big listening library, you'll end up carrying quite a bulk in cassettes along with you. Because they're fairly cheap, you'll probably start with one of these, then work your way onto better things.
 

CD (only) player

I can't see any real reason to buy a CD-only player for travel except the slight cost difference between it and a machine which allows you to play mp3 CDs as well. But if you get one, you'll have the ability to pick up and swap CDs as you go. Battery life is often quite low (15 hours or so), although models vary (few manufacturers list this on the box, however).
 

cost

size/
weight

battery
life

sound
quality

CD /CD mp3 player

These devices are happy with standard CDs or with data CDs containing (typically) 10 hours of quality music in the compressed mp3 format. You can burn the CDs on your own computer and in various internet cafes. With ten mp3 CDs along with you your library has about 100 hours of music! Their only drawback is often the low battery life (one ten-hour CD is about all you'll be able to play sometimes).
 

MiniDisc

Very compact devices that use a special magneto-optical disc. You'll not see pre-recorded MiniDiscs in many places (plenty in Japan). The discs are re-recordable, so with an MD recorder you can swap music with other MD-ers as you go, or record sounds from your trip to add life to a photo show. The discs are very tough, and the players/ recorders themselves usually have metal housings, so they're suited to a hard life on the road. Each disc can store a maximum of 80 minutes' music.
More info >>>
 

cost

size/
weight

battery
life

sound
quality

Hard-drive based players

Apple introduced the original iPod in 2001, and since that time the hard-drive space has gone up from 20GB to 120GB. There are now many producers of HD-based players, though the battery life is rather low in some, and many are limited in which format (WMA, mp3, etc.) they can play. Can store photos and other files. In return you get possibly the tiniest and most functional travel music centre you can find, although these conveniences come at a fairly high price. Altitude limited!

 

Flash Memory players

More rugged players which have no moving parts, and which can store photos and other files. They have mostly lower capacities for music or photo storage compared with HD-based players, but with  generally better battery life, and most feature a bundled FM radio. Plug-in memory cards can expand the storage capacity of some  devices, but the base cost per hour of music is higher with these players than the HD-based models, although Flash memory prices have been falling recently.

 

Radio

I've travelled with a multi-band radio on many occasions and have been happy with my choice. You can hook up stereo phones to some radios and get quality stereo music. Get a good one, though, or  its shortwave bands will be nearly unusable. With a quality radio (possibly with digital tuning), you'll be able to catch news from around the world on SW. A short (4m) length of thin wire is recommended with all models to increase their range if you do a lot of SW listening. Radios usually feature excellent battery life unless you listen at high volume the whole time.

n/a

cost

size/
weight

battery
life

sound
quality

Basically, it's more stars the better. More stars against cost means that the cost is lower (better for your wallet!) than devices with fewer stars. Capacity means the amount of onboard storage the device boasts (or loaded with one CD or minidisc) - more stars = more music. Size/weight rating takes into account the media you'll need to carry for 30 hours of listening time. So although the cassette walkman is quite compact, its cassettes take up space and will be far bulkier than slim MiniDiscs or CDs for the same playing time. Sound quality was rated using quality HEAD phones (except in the case of the radio) and assumes that mp3s have been recorded using at least 192kb/s bitrate.

Please rate how useful you found the information on this page: