Samsung YEPP YP-700: $199

The odd man out is the Samsung YP-700 MP3 player. The size of a short stack of credit cards and weighing 3.3 ounces, the Samsung has a brushed aluminum case, a three line backlit LCD with a Spartan interface, and a non-standard battery that must be removed to be recharged in the wall-mounted charger. It also has a crazy "external battery pack" that takes a throwaway AA battery, just in case the rechargeable doesn't last you through the day.

As an MP3 player the YP-700 is serviceable: the sound quality is good, although some users complain that the amplifier isn't loud enough to overcome city noise. The user interface suffers from a tiny 3-line LCD display and hard-to-press buttons. But my main gripe is that when you connect the YP-700 to a computer, it doesn't appear as an external USB drive; instead you must use proprietary software to upload music onto the player and download recordings that you make.

The YP-700's FM receiver is among the best that I've ever used: it's clear, it has excellent noise immunity, and it pulls in even faint public radio stations. Unfortunately, to use the radio you must connect a funky "remote control," increasing the player's bulk. There's no obvious way to record MP3s from what's playing on the radio, which I suspect is because the radio is actually in the "remote control" and not in the YP-700 itself.

Recording is somewhat disappointing with this device too. There is a tiny built-in microphone that worked fine for voice memos, but picked up noise from my handwriting when I tried to record a lecture. Like the Archos units, there's no provision for an external microphone-but unlike the Archoses (Archoi?), there's no "line-in."

The YP-700 comes with a nickel metal hydride battery covered by a door that looks flimsy, unlike the door covering the proprietary USB connector. (Carrying cases protect the USB connectors of the Archos units, which don't have doors.) Besides the 128MB of built-in memory, the YP-700 has a slot for SmartMedia flash card, allowing you to add another 128MB for about $75. The unit also supports for SecuMAX, a copy protection system that lets protected music play on your YP-700 player but nobody else's. According to the SecuMAX Web site, the system includes various "reporting functions" that seem like a bad idea; fortunately, unless you download SecuMax-encoded music, you'll probably never have to deal with it.

I should like the YP-700, but I don't. It seems very first-generation and not well thought out. The PC software gave me a JavaScript error when I tried to register the product; the battery save feature keeps turning the system off when I'm trying to figure out what to do next; and the finish on the aluminum case doesn't feel good in my hands. It works as advertised, but somehow that's not enough for me. I decided to pass on this one as well.

End Game

In the end, I've come up dry. Although there are three very stylish MP3 players on the market that include both MP3 recording and FM radio capabilities, I didn't like any of them enough to actually buy one. Instead, I'm using a five-year-old Sony FM/AM walkman to listen to my news, I'm playing MP3s through my Apple PowerBook, and on those occasions when I want to record a lecture, I'm using a free application I downloaded from the Internet called Audio Recorder 1.2. I can make fabulous recordings with an external microphone, and halfway decent ones using the built-in Microphone that's present on my PowerBook. (On a PC, you can make pretty good recordings using MusicMatch.)