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)

bump

From doing some more reading it looks like the FM receiver on the Forge is only really for show...

Are there any portable, flash based MP3 players out there with a usable FM receiver ?

My wife has a Samsung YEPP that has a good FM receiver. The menus structure stinks, but there's a sleep timer and the FM tuner does a good job of pulling in weak stations. She has a 512MB model.

-Zeke

edit: I think there's a 1GB model available, and it does charge from the USB connection.

I got one of these , the radio is pretty good, it certainly pulls in Radios 1 to 4 and plenty of local/national stations.

EDIT: I realise it isn't a gig, but there is a 512MB version coming soon.

The very early Forge's had not-so-great radio reception due to some unknown change at manufacture - the pilot units were fine, the production not so fine. The fix is, however, easy and taken care of by Rio support if you have an affected unit.

After that they're pretty decent, IMO. At least as good as the iRiver iHP I was comparing it with, but not as good as a dedicated portable FM unit.

Hugo

from the horse's mouth, sold