The Frontier Labs NEX IIe MP3 player has a 32 bit processor, which contribues to excellent sound quality. However the headphones that come with it are Ok, so I immidiately replaced them with Etimotic ER-6, which made it sound teffiric.

Everyone says that battery cover is easy to break - it is indeed poorly designed and I wish they changed it. Given the player's excellent battery life (the manual claims 20 hrs), replacing batteries is an infrequent business, I'll just have to be careful.

Uploading files is straightforward - the player is recognized as a standard USB removalble drive under Windows and Linux, no additional software installation required. Yes, you can put non-music files on it too.

The display is rather small, I wish it were larger. Mine has a reversed LCD (white on black background), which is Ok, but I would prefer normal black on white.

Overall, very good player and a great value for the money (I got mine for US$90 without memory).

The Frontier Labs NEX IIe gives you good all round sound, quality and the earphones were much better than I expected giving well rounded bass and high tones. However, the earphones are the seperate clip over each ear type, and while there is a comfy foam earpad I personally do not get on with this type of earphone. It's surprising that allthough you have your ears all you life (Hopefully) it is like you have never had them before when it comes to trying to get the hook placed comfortably behind the ear. Doubly so if, like me, you wear glasses!

The unit comes with interghangable facias and I found that I could actually create my own custom ones as these are just thin printed card which sitys under a clear flip up facia. By scanning in one of the supplied ones you could create your own!

The unit is very light and also comes with a carrycase that has not only a belt clip but a belt loop also. I found this an excellent addition as all too often a plain clip will work its way off a belt if you sit down and also leaves your pride and joy prone to being lifted by nimble fingers!

The unit has a very nice one-control-does-all. I had better explain. There is a thumb wheel on the top corner that will select options when you press it in and then step through the options by moving the wheel up or down. Think of it as a mouse wheel and button combo. This takes a little getting used to but saves a lot of fumbling around trying to find various controls when it is clipped on your belt.

The battery life is also very impressive giving 15hours play from two AA batteries.

A very big purchasing point for me was the open ended design! The bios is apparently upgradable to enable it handle new music formats as they inevitably arrive. As standard it supports WMA and MP3 with upgrades available for download as they arrive from the manufactures website. The memory slot is Compact Flash Type II and theoretically has no upper limit! It will take an IBM microdrive should you wish but of course the power comsumption goes up.

I have just ordered a 512Mb CF card for the unit as I only have a 64Mb card at present. The unit will support a 3Gb CF card if you happen to be loaded and can afford one..... Wish I could.

While not the most expensive unit I did considerable research before I bought this unit and read several reviews.

Oh, the unit also has a 32bit processor.