I used to plug my wonderful mp3 player, the iaudio M3 which is brilliant but ive heard their support isnt that good, and theyve been promising a firmware upgrade so that i can finally record in wav (only records in mp3 right now). plays almost everything tho and comes with dock/headphones/remote etc and the 20gb model is available from amp3.co.uk for £179. Then again, for £199 the iAUDIO M5L 20gb is there and thats the model above mine and has 35 hours battery life.
im very impressed with the new ipod. apprarently it can record in 44.1khz. the review at
ars.technica is pretty good. however, you'll be pushed to get one for £200. the 30gb goes for £219 and it comes without a lot of the extras.
If youre broke, they have some 20GB players at amp3.co.uk for just over 100 quid (that i've never heard of but hey).
The Creative Zen touch is a nice player but its big and heavy. It takes a 2.5" HD not a 1.8" like the others. The plus side on this though is that if youre brave enought you can replace the HD with a 120GB one.
Sony, great build quality but crippled features (NW-HD5). Theyre still desperately clinging onto ATRAC and their SonicStage software is a dog. Pity, because the batteries are removable and they have a long life.
iRiver are pretty good and the new H10 looks nice. Its also Windows DRM compatible and has the features of the other older models such as radio/recording. I think its about £200 for the 20gb model.
Best to decide what you need it for. Long trips, just to the gym... do you need to record, do you want radio, do you want to use it for storage, need a remote, is size/weight import, different file types etc.
If it was me with £200 burning a hole in my pocket I think it would be a toss-up between the M5L and the H10. I wouldnt want to fanny around with SonicStage on the Sony, I wouldnt want to carry a brick around like the Creative and the ipod is out of reach.
I like the look of the i-station and the archos gmini 402 but those too are a tad over 200quid. anyway, thats the HD players...