The Most Affordable Water-Resistant MP3 Player

Beach season may be over for those of us who live in more northerly climates, but vacation season is just around the corner, which is why Ultra's new Hydra water-resistant MP3 players make such great gifts. And, at $39.99, they verge pretty close to secret snowflake territory, if you're wondering what to get your colleagues this holiday.

About the size of key fobs, the Hydra players come in 1GB or 2GB sizes and feature FM radio tuners (for those of us who care), voice recorders, and run on just one AAA battery that provides eight hours of playback. They work with Macs and PCs. Music transfer is via drag-and-drop and Windows Explorer. It can play MP3, WAV, ACT, and WMA files, but won't work with DRM to-go files from places like Rhapsody and Yahoo! Music Unlimited (or, duh, iTunes). Ultra is also launching its own music service, NepTUNES, which will have a library of 1.6 million tunes in WMA format that you can use in other players (the store is run by PassAlong Networks, which also runs a store on eBay).

Now, water resistant isn't waterproof, but it's good enough for me when I'm at the beach, on a boat, or near a pool—getting sand or water on in your non-case-protected iPod or camera or other device isn't such a good idea, (though H20 makes some pretty amazing water-proof iPod cases that you can actually take to the pool and do laps with). So this comes in handy for just kicking around marine and beach-y environments.

Besides, for $40, how can you go wrong?