Which MP3 CD player?

the iriver ones are good.

Irivers are ok if you don't plan to workout or even walk with them.I have a 550 that just skips even when walking with it.And others have had the same problem with it.Go for a sony or panasonic,they have better skip protection.My iriver is pretty much used at home at the desk only now.

I think you should get a sony if you want long battery life, easy navigation, and shock protection. the buffers for iriver players are slow and skip if u turn it on while walking. the onlything i have a porblem with sony cd players is that they dont have a backlight

I posted this earlier but this is the info I have sofar:
I'm working on the same thing. I've owned a few and used a few more. My current one is my rio sp250. Delicate plastic but amazing overall. Because I like it so much I was tempted to go with the sp250' oem, Iriver. The sound and firmware are great from iriver but their support seems to be lacking from other reviews. I tried panasonics but the new units were more sensitive to shock than my old rio. They had good battery life but no ff/rw in mp3. That took them off my list. The phillips midlevel unit i tried seemed pretty good with decent shock protection. But I was very impressed with the sony I tried. It doesn't have the great menu of features like the rio/iriver but I shook the snot out of it without a skip and had great battery like. Now that my wife has some sonypoints on a credit card to use it looks like I will be getting a sony. I'm looking at the dnf600, dne10, dne300, and the dnf400. The dnf600 looks great but at nearly double the points of the dnf400 just to get a cheesy clipon remote makes me wonder. Sony has one problem though, about 70 different model numbers all different sizes, battery capacity, battery type, remotes and thats just the obvious things I know about. I'm guessing that there could be big differences in interface, shock protection, and volume. Sorry I don't have a full conclusion yet but generally I say look at phillips and sony currently. Also get it with an extended warrenty credit card and at a store with an extended warrenty. You don't want to have to deal with any of these mfgs directly and the units can be delicate.

i'm gonna second that vote for a panasonic...i use mine while working out, and i'm rarely bothered by skipping. my model is also extremely durable...i've dropped it any number of times, and it's still running strong.
-sam

The Sony Walkman series