RCA Lyra RD2765

Pros: Convenient size, nice style, color display, displsays album cover art, nice controls, easy to use 5 position joystick, great sound quality, supports subscription services such as Napster and Yahoo Unl

Cons: Finish attracts finger prints, carrying case not functional.

Summary: I have owned the RD2765 for about 3 weeks now. It’s not too big and not too small. The size is just perfect for my lifestyle. I really like the high tech mirror finish it makes the iPod mini look old fashioned. The down side is that it collects finger prints so I have to keep wiping it off. It fits nicely in my shirt pocket and if I place the player so that controls are facing out I can operate the basic functions like play, pause and skip just by feel. At first I was concerned that the simple looking controls would not do the job, but the 5 position joystick is actually very convenient and fast. The operation is easy to learn, but it helps to read the users guide to figure out all the things that it can do. The color screen is nice for displaying album cover art, but it only seems to work for MP3 files that were tagged by MusicMatch or some other service that embeds the jpeg cover art in the ID3 tag. It works OK with Windows Media Player and protected content, but you need to keep it in what they call MTP mode. By the way it works great with the new Yahoo Unlimited subscription service. I find that if you are just working with MP3 files it is much faster to use the MSC mode, but then you need to use their Profiling utility before the songs will show up in the Music Menus. I like the fact that you can switch between the MTP and MSC mode with a menu option. With the latest firmware v1.25 this little baby Rocks. I really like the new NEX SET feature they have added with this latest firmware. While you are playing a song the UP/DOWN keys let you jump to the previous or next SET of music. For example if you pressed Play on an Artist it will play all the songs by that Artist, but if you press DOWN it will jump to the next Artist. This also seems to work for Album, Genre and Year, but it does not work if shuffle mode is on. The carrying case leaves a bit to be desired. It is only good for protecting the product from scratches. You can not operate the controls while it is in the case. The sound quality is excellent if you use a good set of earphones. The Sennheisers that it comes with are OK, but I prefer a set of Sony Fontopia MDR-EX71SL which I already owned. Wow the bass and the highs are unbelievable for such a small set of Earbuds.