4. MPIO HD200: Looks, But Little More

This is an elegant-looking entry, with its white shell and blue backlit display. And I'll admit that I have a bit of a weakness for MPIO's players. Why? Simply because they're very practical. All you do is plug them in and you can transfer your music files by simply dragging and dropping. You also don't need to be a techie to use it: the unit features a combination on-off/play-pause button, another for recording, a rocker switch for moving from one menu or song to another, another for adjusting the sound, and one more for hold. Nothing all that complicated.

And yet this model is not as practical as it might sound. For example, to activate the FM Radio function, you have to connect the player to your (Windows) PC first and install software supplied by MPIO. As for the sound, while it doesn't reach the level of Apple's or Creative's quality, the output is very good, if a bit heavy in the lower frequencies. On the other hand, the earphones on our test models caused interference, and their sound wasn't all that great, since they tended to flatten out the music. So you'd do better to replace them.

But the main drawback of this player is its price. Why pay $364 for a 5 GB player when its main competitors are $90 cheaper? Because it can play files in Ogg format? Maybe. But if so, your entire music collection would need to be in that format to make the investment worthwhile. And in that case, you might as well spend a little more for the bigger model, the 20 GB HD300, and get a lot more storage for your dollar.