Portable Music Players That Support Ogg Vorbis?

First a primer for readers who many not know what OGG is: OGG is shorthand for Ogg Vorbis, which is a free and open-source format used for compressing music files, created in response to the charging of licensing fees for software that used the proprietary MP3 format. It's not a widely used format, but because it's free and of quite high fidelity, its use could increase as time goes on.

Because it isn't widely used, portable music players that support Ogg Vorbis are hard to find. Historically they have been limited to off-brand products like the Coby that Mark mentions. But as music players increasingly try to differentiate themselves, OGG is creeping into more top-tier products. After all, it's free, so there's not much reason not to support it.

When it comes to OGG support, my personal feeling is you can't go wrong with OGG-ready products from Samsung. Notably, the YP-U2 series (with up to 2GB of flash memory; pictured) is high-quality, durable, very small, and sounds great. Many of Samsung's older YP (aka YEPP) players also support OGG, but not all of them do, so be sure to check the specs carefully. If you're looking for a hard-drive based player like the Coby, the YH-920 offers 20GB of space and supports OGG; however, it's on the old side.

Also, several iRiver players also support OGG. I've used the T10 in the past; it's actually designed for outdoor/sports use and is quite rugged. You shouldn't have any trouble with it falling apart.