Its stereotypical, many of our technologies, especially mp3 players and cd players come from china and korea and are practically thrown together in months, sold, and shortly after remarketed under a different name, this is to prevent the effects of negative market feedback like this.. Go with mp3 players that have been around a while.
BTW, Mp3 players with hard drives, you drop the player on the ground, while its running, there is a good chance it will destroy the hard drive.. This is what just amazes me about how idiotic the american market is..
If you want a reliable mp3 player, get one of the mp3 CD players.. The Target store near me was selling memorex mp3/cd players for about 20 dollars, there is one brand going around that has a case opener switch on the bottom, a cantilever switch on the left side, and a readout that greets you with goodbye when you turn the player off, this model is the best mp3/cd player I know about, and its sold under many different brands, thus its rebranded, but the model doesn't seem to change. I got it once under a company called Audiovox and once under Memorex.. You think memorex makes CD players, doubtful, its a brand that Americans trust, brands are like commodities, you just plop them down on some anonymous stuff made in China and people trust it.. So you can never tell what you are getting, instead, look for the "form" of a popular player, don't pay too much attention to the brand..
BTW, the LCD display on these CD players I speak of, have a orange backlit LCD display, it comes on for a moment the minute you turn it on, and then it will darken.. You can ask a service person at the store where you are to show you the player and ask them to turn it on, and off.. If you see a orange backlit display followed by the words GOODBYE, you have the right CD player.. CD's with mp3 songs on them store about 6 times as much audio as a normal CD.. The player comes with 8 MB of internal memory, this can store about a 45 seconds of audio.. The process is called buffering, here is how it works.. Your CD player spins up, the head reads 45 seconds of data really quickly, it slows down, and it plays the data, before the 45 seconds of audio data is used up, it spins up to take 45 seconds more, then is slows down.. This action conserves battery life, many times over a CD player. However if you jump through the songs, it has to refill the buffer with 45 seconds of audio, this causes a delay.. But if you play the music right through, it will magically have the songs connected with zero delay.. Try setting the mp3/CD player to shuffle mode and experiment with this..
BTW, this 45 second buffering of music is the "Anti Shock" method that players claim to have..
CD players are bulky, but all they would need to do is add 32 or 64 MB to a CD player, and nobody would have much use for the HD based mp3 players or the memory based ones, other than for the smaller size. I haven't looked for it, but I'm sure someone has created such a player..