I looked at a lot of mp3 players before getting this one, and in fact got the Lexar MPC-231 JumpGear MP3 USB first. I ended up returning the Lexar primarily because the controls were not very good.

My primary criteria were: size and weight, price, sound quality, and openness, which I’ll define as not requiring special software, being accessible as a normal drive, and the ability to easily store things other than music.

Of lesser import were disk space (anything 4G and above works great; even 1G would likely be fine), music management software, ability to connect to online music retailers, and slickness of interface.

I had it narrowed down to the Muvo and the ipod mini. I was pretty well set on getting the mini when I ran across the deal for the Muvo. Buying from Amazon and using the $30 credit card incentive, it worked out to $200 - $30 credit card - $50 rebate = $120, which was significantly less than the mini’s $250 price tag. So I gave it a shot, particularly after hearing about its audiophile sound quality.

I’m very happy with this thing. It’s very small and very light; much smaller and lighter than a typical cell phone, so you’ll barely feel you’re carrying it. Plenty of room for music. The transfer speed is quite good, although I don’t have much to compare it to. Once you connect it via the USB cable, it shows up as a drive, so you can drag and drop songs onto it very easily.

The Zen is the other one to look at. It’s quite a bit bigger than the Muvo, and I didn’t see any features that compelled me to put up with the extra size. It may be very nice though; I haven’t really tried it.

The cons are typically said to be the interface, which is less slick than some of the others, but worked well for me immediately; and the lack of ability to create playlists on the device. I don’t care about either, so I’m very happy with this.

I would recommend you buy the Creative Labs Nomad MuVo² 4 GB MP3 Player.