A low-cost no-fuss music player
Majority MP3 Player: Two-minute review
The Majority MP3 Player shines for its simplicity in a world where MP3 players are trying hard to be your replacement smartphone, radio and Kindle all wrapped into one.
The Majority MP3 Player is not trying to be the best MP3 player ever invented; it’s trying to be a simple music device for people who don’t have degrees in sound engineering. Created by British audio company Majority, this is basically the cheapest MP3 player on the market that you should seriously consider buying, found on Amazon by searching ‘MP3 player’ and sorting ‘price: low to high’. And it wears that budget badge with pride.
The Majority MP3 is absolutely tiny, and very lightweight too, so it’s not going to drag a hole in your pocket like many of its rivals. Its plastic shell may seem ‘cheap’ to some, but it’ll take drops and knocks better than delicate premium options, and contributes to its lovely lightness.
My favorite feature is the sports clip on the back, which firmly clasps the MP3 player to your clothes, bag or anything else. This was so handy for keeping the player held still while keeping it within arms’ reach (ie, not in a pocket), and also means you can take the player for a run or workout and clip it to your clothes, to exercise hands-free.
Design aside, there’s more to like here too: the player is simple to use (well, once you’ve got your head around some user interface quirks) and has a battery life that outstrips lots of the competition.
As you can imagine from the price, the Majority MP3 doesn’t exactly have all the trappings of its pricier rivals. You’re not getting a touchscreen, so you’ll have to rely on a fairly rudimentary button system to get around, and don’t expect to fiddle with an on-device EQ, watch videos or read audiobooks, or download any more than 128GB of music (or 16GB, without an SD card).
However if you’re simply buying a nice lightweight little gadget that lets you outsource your music listening to a non-smartphone device, sometimes you don’t need bells and whistles; you just need simplicity. And simplicity is something the Majority MP3 delivers in spades.Majority MP3 Player review: price and release date
Costs $35 / £30 (about AU$60)
Available since March 2023 (according to Amazon)
As stated in the introduction, the Majority MP3 is one of the cheapest MP3 players on the market at the time of writing. How cheap? Uh – that’s a good question.
At the time of writing, Majority has two separate listings for the device on Amazon UK: £29.95 and £34.95, and I can’t for the life of me tell what the difference between the two is. I’d hazard a guess that there isn’t one. The expert tech minds at TechRadar have come to the conclusion that you should buy the cheaper one.
What about outside the UK? It’s available on Amazon US for $35, in mercifully just one entry. There’s no Australian availability, but these prices would translate to around AU$60.Majority MP3 Player review: Features
16GB memory, expandable to 128GB
Limited list of extra tools
34-hour battery life, lower if using Bluetooth
You can fit up to 16GB of music onto the Majority MP3 player, which the company estimates will take 4,000 songs to fill. If you buy a compatible SD card you can expand that by 128GB which will fit countless hours of music in MP3 format. The only file format officially supported is MP3 – no AAC or WAV support is listed here.
Despite being a simple device, the Majority does have a few extra tools that may come in handy. You can record audio notes, change your background, use a stopwatch or check a calendar (though I couldn’t find a way to add anything to it) and create folders and playlists on the device.
Some features that many other MP3 players have are missing here. You can’t streaming over Wi-Fi, sync with audiobooks services, watch videos, or tune into the radio, so you’ll have to rely on whatever MP3 files you manually download. There’s also no way to customize your listening experience, beyond picking your chosen headphones carefully.
There’s a 3.5mm jack for wired listening, or you can ditch cables and set up a Bluetooth connection, which lets you stream the MP3 files through some of the best wireless earbuds or one of the best Bluetooth speakers – though it’ll harm your battery life of course.
That battery life is 34 hours by default if you’re using wired audio, which is a fair bit longer than some competitors (many of our favorite MP3 players last between 15 and 20 hours).
