Mobile Entertainment Gear

Who says you can’t take it with you? From MP3’s, portable DVDs and high-tech headphones, sometimes the small stuff is better than the big stuff.

Apple iPod
The reigning king of MP3 players is the Apple iPod. Sleek, stylish and easy to use, iPod works with both Mac and Windows and comes in a 10, 20 and 40 gigabyte versions which hold 2,500, 5,000, or 10,000 songs respectively. That’s a lot of songs and one of the drawbacks to the iPod. There is so much storage space no one but maybe Beck or PDiddy will ever fill one up. Sure you can now use new iPods to store and transfer data, but truth is it’s a music machine. Battery life could be better and there is not an FM radio, but iPod is still the King of Cool. ($299, $399, $499; www.apple.com)

Rio Nitrus
Brutus to the mighty iPod Caesar is RIO with its new Nitrus MP3 player. Featuring 1.5 GB of memory which is about 25 hours of songs, what separates the Nitrus from the pack is it quarter sized hard drive using Cornice technology. This allows the Nitrus to not only be about half the size of an iPod but improves battery life tremendously with over 16-hours of continuous playback per charge on its battery. Nitrus also has an expandable slot for tiny SD or MMC cards that allows you to increase it memory by up 512 MB. A bit pricey, but for smaller form factor and better battery life, the Nitrus is the first real challenger to the iPod. ($299; www.rioaudio.com)

Etymotic Headphones
Both the RIO and iPods are Mazeratis of MP3 audio, but the earpieces that come with them are exploding Pintos. If you are going to drop $300 bucks on an MP3 player spend some extra dough and get a good pair of earphones. You’ll be amazed at how much better they make your recordings sound. While there are many good $40-60 ear buds out there, for enthusiast, the best earpieces in the business come from Etymotic Research. From its $140 Isolator ER6 to its crème, de la crème $330 Micorpro ER 4P powered earphones your music will never sound the same, only better. (www.etymotic.com)

Panasonic PalmTheater LX9
While many of today’s laptops sport DVD players, we still like the standalone portable DVD format because you can take it to the beach house, the kids room or the bathroom for that matter. Panasonic created the first portable DVD player and now it new generation Palm Theater DVD –LX 9 features a high resolution widescreen for movies playback of almost any audio format you throw at it (MP3, DVD audio, WAV) but its secret weapon is a pair of external tubular speakers and a docking station that allows you to take your home theater anywhere or nowhere. ($995; www.panasonic.com)