RCA Lyra 2

The price of a good MP3 player has dropped like a stone over the past year, but it's sometimes tough to find the features and the quality that you're looking for that won't drain your petty cash. The old rule still applies in purchasing anything tech-- a lower price usually means lower quality.

RCA has managed to bridge that gap between price and quality, however, with it's Lyra 2 RD2209 MP3 player. Perfect for music on the go, especially in situations where CD players would skip or refuse to play all together. the Lyra 2 is small and light, making it the perfect workout companion.

It comes with a 32 MB CompactFlash card that is capable of holding up to an hour of music. The unit supports both Type I and Type II cards, which means that you can easily upgrade to more memory.

Drawbacks? The biggest is simply that the supplied memory card will only give you a short playlist of songs. You must buy the larger (and more expensive) card in order to place an entire CD's worth of quality tunes on your player.

Also, the Lyra 2 is not, strictly speaking, playing an MP3. It depends heavily on the included MusicMatch Jukebox software to convert the MP3's to a readable form. This means that you cannot simply copy your MP3's onto the card and go. You must use the software. Using a thirdparty software packages means accepting thirdparty advertisement and solicitations. Most annoying.

On the whole, the Lyra 2 makes for a handy workout companion. The included digital FM radio capability means you're not stuck with just your playlist of tunes, and that may come in handy, since you'll only get about an hours worth of music anyway.

You can pick up your Lyra 2 on the web at www.amazon.com.