[Judge]

Coincidentally, I was in an electronics store today, and they had quite a wide variety of DAPs on the board (most batteries were empty, so I mostly played about comparing sizes etc.). A few of the DAPs that were there:

- iRiver S10: damn, that thing really is amazingly small! If I was in the market for a <4GB player (that is, if I didn't have a lot of music), the 2GB S10 would be a great choice. Seriously, have you ever seen one in real life?

- iRiver Clix2: first time I saw the Clix2. Looks great. D-click functionality works like a charm (same with the S10, which is essentially a small version of the original Clix). Size put me off a little bit though: it's about the same size as my D2, albeit that the D2 is thicker (won't go into the D2 vs Clix2 battle here, there are other threads for that). Overall a good offering by iRiver though.

- New iPods. Seen those before, except the 160GB Classic. Thicker than I though when comparing to the 80GB Classic. Does make a perceptible and actual difference in thickness. If I were to buy a Classic, I'd probably buy an 80 gigger for that reason. I'll wait for what other companies' offerings in the HD range will be first though. Cowon, where's that X7? iPod Nano is cool too. iPod Shuffle in new colours: meh. Old colour Shuffles (with exactly the same components as the new ones, except for colour) were discounted though... weird.

- iAudio 7: first time I saw this one as well. It had a full battery, so I played around a bit. I have to say I'm not a fan of the diagonal touch strip. And the iAudio 7 is quite thick as well, not really pocket friendly like the Clix2 for example. Not a player for me, even if it comes in 16GB.

In the end, at the current state of affairs in DAP world, I'm still quite satisfied with my D2 + SD card. IMO really an exceptional offering by Cowon.