The ability to play to play videos is one that is increasingly being sought for in MP3 players. We are, after all, living in the age of media convergence, where we are working towards the ideal situation where we will have a gadget that will be able to do everything a person could ever need. Under this arrangement, it follows that a MP3 player whose ability is limited to only playing music files is highly undesirable when compared side by side with a video MP3 player, that is, a MP3 player that in addition to playing (audio) music files, can also play all manner of video files as well.

From all this, it follows that many gadget shoppers are increasingly going shopping purposely for a video MP3 player; a far departure from the situation a few years ago where people tended to go shopping for a gadget that could play audio files as far as a MP3 player went, with the ability to play video files (if at all available) only coming as a pleasant extra.

So having established that people are actually going shopping purposely for video MP3 players, the question that is likely to follow is as to what particular features one should be on the look out for in such a video MP3 player – seeing that it is being bought more for its ability at playing video, rather than audio files.

The first and most obvious feature that one cannot afford to turn a blind eye to, when shopping for a video MP3 player has to be its screen size and quality. The screen is after all the primary output device for the video MP3 player – and however good a particular model might be in all other respects, in as much as its screen quality is poor, it flunks the performance test hand-down. As far as screen quality goes, in this day and age, it would be quite uncalled for to go for anything less that TFT or LCD -as these are the best screens available on the market. Talking of screen quality, touch-screen functionality, if you can get it would be a great extra to get too – though not absolutely essential as far as video playing capability goes. With regard to screen size, you need to go for a size that makes for convenient viewing, rather than one that you have to perpetually squint at to see what is playing on the gadget. This is likely to call for a huge compromise though, when you take into consideration the fact that making a very wide screen possible might mean making the gadget uncomfortably huge, especially if it is a portable MP3 player you are also looking for.

Support for as many video formats as possible is another important attribute in the ideal video MP3 players. In addition to the standard MP3 video, the ideal video MP3 player should also be able to offer support for other native video formats like MPEG and DivX, and possibly even video codec formats like the FLAC.