Despite the wailing and gnashing of teeth that emanates from the bowels of music industry boardrooms, technologies and devices that enhance the portability of music continue to grow in popularity. The concern is not over the proliferations of the gadgets themselves, it's about the files that are loaded onto them, which have flooded peer-to-peer networks, cardboard boxes under flea market counters and the hard drives of computer users across the world.

Wherever your MP3s come from, an incredible range of devices exist, which allow you to take you take your collection with you, wherever you go. In fact, they're not even limited to MP3 any more, with many players supporting the WMA format, or proprietary formats like Sony's ATRAC.

As the MP3 player market proves popular with even the non-tech-savvy users, manufacturers are finding ways of building more features into smaller packages, as well as investigating different technologies for storing the files. You have the original solid state players, usually with in-built memory and expansion ports for SD cards or Memory Stick; then there's the hard disk devices, like the iPod; there's also a new generation CD-based players, like the old school CD Walkman with MP3 playback functionality added in; finally there's Sony's own Mini Disk player, which is much like a regular Mini Disk, but you can transfer audio from your PC directly to the device.

It is reasonable to assume that price is the deciding factor with most consumers, but it also has a lot to do with quality, reliability, the convergence of other technologies such as integrated FM tuners, as well as the pros and cons of the respective storage formats.
With a wide variety of players, each with varying levels of functionality, quality and cost, what features are important to consumers? What is an acceptable trade off, in terms of bang for bucks? Does a bigger price tag mean better quality or greater functionality? This roundup explores those issues, and has a look at cross section of the types of players currently available.