When shopping for an Mp3 player there are a lot of available choices and the confusion of whats the most compact, what will die on me the fastest and what holds the most songs makes this decision even harder.

First off as with any piece of consumer electronics you have to figure in how you will be using your player and how much you are willing to spend as these factors will greatly effect the choices you will have in players.  If you are like me and work a lot of hours and can listen to music at work then you wouldn't want something that only lasted a couple of hours on a charge especially if you can't readily charge the player at work or wherever you may be.

Jogging and Other Exorcise

These are the people who will most likely benefit from the much cheaper flash memory based players because they are very compact and generally very durable plus a small few of these take standard batteries which can be standard alkalines or a rechargable of choice to keep the music constant.  These are readily available and and now come with storage capacities of up to 8 Gb which is more then enough for a morning jog or a day at the gym.  If I was to make a suggestion I would suggest the mobiblue, it is I believe the smallest most compact player on the market today and is loaded with functions.

Portable Multimedia

If asked about this most people will respond , "Don't they have an Ipod that does that?" and you would be absolutely correct unfortunately the ipod isn't the best answer when it comes to high quality digital content.  The Ipod was a very early contender in the PVP market and unfortunately the Ipod video was neglected in a great many aspects when it comes to R&D for PVP hardware.  The Ipods screen color depth is inferior to most contenders and the required formatting is of a far inferior format then most competitors offering PVP's at the same price range.  The major factor for these lately have been size and durability, remember this is your mp3 player to so you want it to be portable.  Cowon has several great models for this but up until recently there best was very bulky, they have buckled down and created some very exciting flash based solutions.  Archos is number one in my book right now as they have beautiful full featured pvp's that still stay within pocket size and are prized to go starting at 30$ less then the Ipod video for the 30Gb Archos 404.  The Zen vision M seems to be getting the most attentiuon these days as it is price comparable to Ipod but the screen is brighter and more vibrant and the video support is much broader not to mention its very user friendly interface.

Hard Drive Based Players

Like PVP's these are compact large storage solutions for people on the go but there are far too many choices to make the search an easy one.  The Ipod is known for its easy interface and playlist functions but lacks in durability and price effectiveness not to mention features.  Iriver has grown to make store bought players and they have always made wonderful products that outlive out play and are simply better to the consumer but Iriver is by far not the only excellent company for these, Creative (zen, zen vision, etc.), Cowon, Iaudio and a few other not so well known companies have imporved on this concept and produced quality products.  Chances are if you own an iPod you didn't do a lot of shopping and are missing out on the features that it's superior competitors offer for the same price such as built in alarm clocks, cheaper standardized hardware, built in tuners and my personal favorite the absence of the need to have iTunes.  Nowadays if you can't drag and drop your music then don't waste the money the sheer fact that a player restricts its user from sharing from one computer to the next is a much bigger hinderance then one would expect.

Update: To Zune or Not to Zune

The new Zune 80GB is out and now is a good time to post a definitive explanation of both.  The original Zune caught my eye during its first Golden Quarter debut, and it was quickly noticed the immense marketing was not going to be as successful as it iPod counterpart.  First lets examine why shall we?  The marketing flyers firs distributed to retailers were very vague at explaining what the player could and couldn't do, in fact they were fairly vague in exlaining it as being a multimedia player at all.  The player its self in my books ranks as a mediocre attempt at Microsoft's contribution to the MP3/PMP market for many reasons which include a not so intuitive syncing interface and a wifi feature that well... we just do not need, many had anticipated further firmware expansion of the wifi feature but so far it just hasn't happened.  To answer the cries of die hard MS fans Microsoft recently released the Zune II or Zune 80GB which again briskly defeats iPod as an actual mp3 player by offering prime storage capactiy and a few pleasant alterations to the aesthetics of the original but from what has been added their has also been removals, most notably the equalizer settings feature which means the player offers no onboard equalizer at all.  Microsoft's answer to the removal of this feature is that patrons who have quality headphones will not require the use of an equalizer, unfortunately what Microsoft has neglected to take into account is the steep price curve to what can be considered "good" headphones, a set of Shure E3s can cost in upwards of 300 dollars and most audio enthusiasts just aren't ready to pay more for their headphones then their player.  In conclusion the Zune is of coarse a suitable iPod replacement but even with the original Zune meeting record low price ranges it just simply can't contend with the great many players already on the market, perhaps a big step in the right direction would be to offer a firmware update that allows the computer to meet UMS compliance (plug and play/drag and drop).