yea, there is no such thing as the BEST player out there. Its just that ipods are WAYYY ahead of the game right now. Its just also a brainwashing thing. If one said im going to buy an mp3 player, they would first, obviously think about an iPod.
my first ipod was a shuffle, 512mb. Then i got the 1st gen nano 2gb. It got jacked by some Mexican dude while i had my back turned (bummer). Then i got the Creative zen vision m instead of the ipod video, but i couldnt get it to connect with my eMachines comp (it was a shitty piece of shit). So then i just got tired of it and exchanged it for a 8gb nano second gen.
The vision M was an amazing player. It has everything that an ipod has plus more. More colors, bigger screen, fm radio, etc. The sucky part was that it was almost twice as thick.