T9 media player: Just call it the Samsung nano

Not quite as innovative as the company's recent K5 portable, Samsung's latest MP3 player, the T9, nonetheless crams an impressive feature set into its super-slim casing. You get all the perks you'd expect from a non-Apple flash player — FM tuner, voice recorder, text viewer — with the added bonus of video playback. It's doubtful your MPEG-4 vids will look much better than passable on the 1.8-inch LCD screen, but for short clips you should be okay. PC software is included for converting digital video so it's optimized for the T9, another indication that the quality most likely won't even match that of the video iPod. Then again, the T9, available with 2 or 4 GB for $150 or $200 respectively, costs the same as the iPod nano, which we all know can't play video at all.

Obviously the T9 will turn its nose up to any iTunes downloads, but it's ready for songs from pretty much whatever subscription-downloading service you choose. Plus it has a nifty feature that lets you speed up or slow down music playback, simulating the nostalgic fun of playing a 33-rpm record at 78.