Will the Real iPod Killer Please Stand Up?

Since 2004, MP3newswire.net has dutifully been publishing its iPod Killers for Christmas story. But to date, it's been a sad story with few contenders. This year things are looking up, with a few notables strong enough to put the dagger through the iPod's heart.

A few of the top contenders:

SanDisk Sansa e280R: The first 8GB flash unit and cheaper than the iPod nano. It's got a nice user interface, a small form factor, a huge amount of storage, and is sold with the Rhapsody music service. Because SanDisk makes flash memory, the company can be very aggressive about price.

Archos 504: Archos makes personal media players capable of playing music, movies, or photos. This one cleans up some of the user interface issues of past units and has a nice 4.3-inch TFT screen with DVD resolution. Available in 80GB and 160GB versions.

The Samsung YP-K5 MP3: Its most unique feature is the built-in pop-up speakers. It also features a touch screen and comes in 1GB, 2GB, and 4GB flavors.

Microsoft Zune: Certainly it's going to have the marketing budget to compete with iPod, but it's also going to have features including built-in Wi-Fi; an FM tuner; support for a number of codecs including H.264, MP3, WMA, WMV, MPEG4, .JPG, and AAC; and the ability to share audio and photos with other owners. Plus, a new MSN Music service will complement the hardware.

The iPod killer list has its share of eccentricities, too. For example, if you like the Nike/Apple jogging device, but don't want the sneakers, check out the Sony NW-S205F Sports Player with the built-in pedometer.

The stealth entry on the list is the Sony PSP, which MP3newswire is quick to point out is much more than a game system. It's a full-blown personal media player and, in fact, Sony sells one unit for every 2.3 iPod units sold.

For the entire killer list, visit MP3newswire.