2. Look & Feel

To look at, on paper and out of the box, the Vision:M is a lot heftier than its increasingly petite opponents. With nearly an .8" (2cm) depth, she's certainly bigger than the current crop of players, but to hold the Vision:M doesn't feel overly heavy or large, and given the sturdier design and room for extras that accompanies its size (particularly given some of the recent fiasco associated with flimsy media player designs) the extra girth may even be a plus.

The rounded edges and general smooth look mean that the player's design can't be described as massive in its own right. It comes in a variety of colors to suit your own personal tastes, and the unit we received came in black. The stylish front design includes subtly back-lit buttons around the enlarged scroll-pad, which the larger endowed (thumb-wise) among us will appreciate.

The buttons on the edges, which include a programmable shortcut key which you can configure to a variety of jobs, seem a little stiff and require some more effort to push than you might expect.

The admirably scratch-resistant matt surface does have one drawback that has been plaguing similar designs from all media-player designers, from Sony's new walkman to the iPod Nano and beyond: it attracts noticeable fingerprints like moths onto a naked flame.