very nice, solid unit, couple of annoyances

Author's Rating:

Pros: good price, solid build, good sound, easy navigation

Cons: very slow "refreshing media" thing is so annoying it happens (about every 3rd time)

The Bottom Line: 
cheap, slips in the pocket, sounds good, good battery

Author's Review
i paid about 140 over a year ago for the 8GB version then another 50 or so for an 8GB microSD chip for a total of 16GB. 

-very light and still very solid.  i've dropped it a few times and it's been no problem.
-battery life is decent to good.  annoying thing is once it gets low it goes really quick (says it's got about 20% left, really it's like 15 minutes).
-navigation is pretty good.  couple of flaws, i'm still not sure how to get from the menu back to the song that's playing (not that it bothers me much).  pressing the down button to get to the menu is completely unintuitive.  other than that pretty straightforward.
-sound is good.  couple of presets, fine.  use your stereo to eq, not your mp3 player.  gets pretty loud, much more would damage hearing.
-bud headphones that come with are actually tolerable (i use jogging)
-sound recorder is handy (see below)
-syncing to PC is easy

-not being able to cue up the next song is annoying.  feature was available on my archos and i miss the hell out of it
-after syncing to your PC, can (with additional 8GB chip) take up to 15 minutes to "refresh media." this is incredibly annoying
-sound recorder seems to have lost a couple things i recorded.  not good.  i stopped relying on it