WHAT'S HOT: At $199 and packed with 256MB of internal memory, this IRiver is the first flash player we've seen to come in at a price that's less than $1 per megabyte of storage. The player's sleek, tapered design makes it suitable for a pocket or for wearing around your neck as a pendant. Its tiny navigation joystick takes a little getting used to; once you get the hang of it, however, moving between folders and tracks is a breeze. Depending on how you move it, the joystick guides you through tracks, playback menu options, and volume control. The device has a wide selection of custom playback options (for example, you can control how quickly the unit scans through songs). And music sounded excellent through the included Sennheiser earpiece headphones.

WHAT'S NOT: Though the four-line LCD is generally more readable than the displays of most players we've reviewed, the screen is crowded with icons that are not critical during playback (the kilohertz and the kilobits per second at which a particular MP3 file was encoded, for example).

WHAT ELSE: The unit uses a single AA battery and ships with a cable to connect its USB 1.1 port to your PC. To transfer tunes, IRiver includes its easy-to-use IRiver Music Manager software. Three buttons along one side of the triangular player serve as controls for play/stop/power, playback memory and equalizer adjustments, and playback modes. The neck-strap ring on top swivels, preventing cord tangles, but the player is also so small that it will easily fit in a pocket or your hand. Due to its minuscule size, this is one of the few flash players we've tested that do not have a media slot--memorywise, what you get when you buy it is all you can have. The FM sound quality is good, and tuner presets let you pop directly to a favorite station with ease. The built-in microphone is adequate for voice recordings but may not suffice in noisy environments.

UPSHOT: Relatively low priced, elegant, and great sounding, the tiny IFP-190T is supremely portable. Considering its 256MB of memory, we could live without a media slot.