Well I decided to take the plunge and actually ordered a NWD-B105 from Amazon yesterday (£31), the unit arrived this morning and to be honest I don't reckon it's all that bad. Nice build quality and if I'm honest I can't fault the unit at all, I already have a NW-A806 and wanted a cheap player to use and abuse whilst out running etc. First impressions: 1. The sound quality is very good, certainly as good as my A806 (once custom EQ settings were applied) 2. The build quality is up to usual Sony standards, I have no complaints. 3. Ditch the supplied headphones, they work (enough said) my Shure E2C's or the EX's that came with th A806 are far better. 4. Finally I can ditch Sonicstage Yippee !! (Using WMP 11 encoding WMA's at 160 Kbps - Sounds fine to me) 5. Sony software to transfer MP3's etc is included on the unit itself - Functional, works perfectly well and nice to see. 6. No background hiss that I can detect. 7. Voice recording works but they've used a codec not supported by WMP, so can only play them on the B105 - Shame. 8. Acceptable 3 line display, not great quality, but for the price I don't think you can complain. I guess it's nearest competitors price wise would have to me the iPod Shuffle (no display) or the Zen Stone Plus (scratches real easy) - The standard NWD-B105 is far cheaper than both (without radio) and stuffs them on functionality especially if you purchase the B105 with the radio. The auto transfer is a useful application, it's a small applet (543kbs) that resides on the flash drive, simply stuff the B105 into a usb port and run the program and it'll automatically download any file ending with .mp3 or .wma straight across the player, with no fuss - It's simple, effective and stable, you can also direct it to indivdual files if needed (Needless to say it also works flawlessly with Windows Media Player). Yeah okay I know it's only got a 12 hour battery life, but I only run or go to the gym for an hour or two a day (so no problems). I'm never far from a usb port either at work or home - Really don't perceive it to be a big issue. Personally I reckon Sony hit the nail right on the head, it's a great little MP3 / WMA Player for the money.