I've had my Creative Zen Xtra 30 Gb for over 2 years now and it appears that it will have to be retired because the left channel keeps cutting out. Of all things the headphone jack is what broke, and I didn't drop it either. I'm just surprised that I didn't totally scratch the screen, crash the hard drive, wear out a button etc.

I'm looking for something that has more storage than a typical memory based mp3 player (I want more than 512MB or 1 Gig), but is a smaller than the Zen Xtra (something smaller and lighter than a brick).

I don't think I'm interested in those more expensive devices that can play videos and burn a battery in 2 hours. I think I'm targeting something like an iPod nano 4 Gb or the ~ 5 Gb devices put out by Hitachi, Creative or iRiver.

Any comments on these different companies? I'm looking for basic features, good quality and durability, value for money.

I love my ipod 5g 60gb. I'm not going to bother with listing all the reasons I love it save the fact that I've gone through 6 DAPs over the years and this one is the first one I've been satisfied with- and all these years I was dead-set on avoiding the ipod. Wll this one gets my unscientific & biased thumbs up.

I love my 4gb nano - and being flash-based gives you the added bonus that drops won't leave it unusable.

Unfortunately I don't think that is the case. If you drop it and break the headphone jack it could still become unusable. I know what you're trying to say though, no hard drive crashes...

I'm just a little bitter that my mp3 player broke in the same place a 1980's walkman could break.

There's one long thread here. It's old but very useful IMO. You should be able to get very small but 4gig players now. I think other very good brands are Samsung and Cowon. Creative and iRiver usually can't match these brands (or Sony of course) in engineering quality.