Archos 504 (80GB)

Pros: reliability, great video, good audio

Cons: no volume leveling, speaker coul have been a little louder

Summary: I have tried the iPod 80g with video, the Wolverine ESP 160g. the Creative Vision W 60g , and my Archos 504 80g.
The iPod was not for me - I cant knock the product, but its screen size was just too small. I returned it to Circuit City after 2 days.
Next came the Wolverine.I ordered it online(Costco.com) and could'nt wait to get it. It had all the features I wanted- bigger screen, huge hard drive,card reader (so I could download my pictures from my camera right to this thing),ect. I returned this item to my nearest Costco store the next day. It was a big dissapointment. The videos that I had dowloaded to it would not play. The video playback was choppy and distorted.
Next I bought the Creative Zewn W. Great product, excellent video playback, nice screen, great audio player.I bought it from Walmart.com and after a week I returned it to My neerest Walmart store. Although the software it comes with is realy great, I didnt like the inabilty to manage my files the way I wanted. I also didnt like the fact that you have to allocate the amount of hard drive space you want. Anything put on the "hard drive" space is not recognized by the Zen, only your computer(even if its a pic. or an audio file or a movie. If you can deal with this, its a great product
Finaly it bought the Archos, also from Walmart.com. I fell in lovee with it right away. I bought the 80g 'cause the 160g was not available and its more than I wanted to spend on a pvp player anyway. Actually, the unit I have now is the second i've had. The first one, for some reason, shut off and would not power back on the very next day. I
took it back to Walmart and re-ordered another unit- the one I own now. I've had this one 3 mo. now, not a single problem.
The video is EXCELLENT(avi /divix files)- I had to download their "pluggin"(20 euros- yes its in euros)so I could play mpeg movies/audio. Its a great mp3 player. I found it easier to create a playlist from the unit itself rather than creating a m3u file and copying it to the unit(MusicMatch kept freezing up when I tried to create a m3u file)The unit can also be used as an MTP device-you must have Win. xp with service pack 2 and Windows media player 10.I recommend this unit to everybody. My brother-in-law also bought the same unit and has never had a problem with it.