I think I am going to buy my wife an MP3 player for Christmas, for use in the gym and walking to work.

My instinct is to buy a Rio Forge, but I'm not sure if it is actually the best player out there.

The requirements are:

- flash based rather than hard drive
- able to have at least 1GB of storage
- have an FM tuner, that works
- insanely easy to use
- light and small
- physically indestructable by mere mortals
- either very long battery life or chargable by docking

Are there any better players out there ?

A few questions about the Forge specifically:

- does the FM tuner work well (most cheap FM tuners I have ever tried are unusable)
- what it the max storage for the 256MB model (can't work out whether you can use a 1GB SD card or whether it is limited to 512MB)
- is the 512MB model going to be available in the UK before Christmas (2004)