I have tried a few portable players over the years and find most somewhat lacking or way out of my price range. I better mention I like my audio but am far from a serious audiophile these days. I find lower budjet options in particular are a bit of a minefield and you don't always get what you pay for although you never get more than what you pay for. First I had a creative zen and various ipods and liked neither. I tried out a few entry and low midrange irivers but wasn't over impressed relative to their price. Tried a ton of other generic stuff too.

Quality wise I mainly encode my cd's in ogg vorbis (aotuv) since a lot of the genres I listen to (on average headphones, genuine sen cx400s) don't benefit much from lossless hence the space trade isn't worth it, and I use flac mainly for stuff where lossy isn't acceptable. The problem I found is unless I want to spend silly money (I don't) on a pmp all the western ones don't support formats I want like flac, ogg, ape and so on. I ended up buying a ramos T8 which is chinese made and touches the formats I like, also it's quality is impressive and 3d playfx makes a big difference on some instrumental stuff. The 32Gb flash card expansion is a definate pro. The big downside is the custom EQ is only 5 bar range and I'd prefer a more extensive one, also the firmware isn't perfectly polished and there are a few niggles although I could make my own I suppose if I was that unhappy.

Has anyone compared these to an equivalent western pmp like a high end cowon? I'd be interested in hearing others opinions if they have ever personally compared stuff like this. I've never had a high end global like western and Korean or Japanese ones and wondered if they are worth the extra money? I'd consider buying one if the quality was much higher but I know many decent chinese players like various ramos ones use the same sound chips and the like (such as various wolfston ones) and a big part of me suspect I'd be paying for reputation, higher manufacturing costs and larger profit margins etc rather than better quality.