When purchasing an MP3 player, most people look at the I-pod as their first choice. However, this is not wise.

When buying you should look at many things.

1. Price. There is no need to spend over the odds on an MP3 Player.

2. Make. There are thousands of manufacturers out there. Check out forums on the manufacturers websites for complaints, and look at other reviews.

3. Battery Life. The I-pod is one of the worst MP3 players for battery life. Sony have many MP3 players with good battery life.

4. What you want to do with it. There is no point buying a video ipod or a " zen vision : m" if you are just going to listen to music, or even watch videos rarely. It is a great novelty, but often you pay £70 more for this.

5. Capacity. Similarly, only buy what you need. You will pay about £20 for an extra Gigabite. Just make sure you buy enough for your music capacity. It will tell you how many songs the player holds on the box/website. For notice, 4 GB holds about 1000 songs.

6. Formats. Don't buy an I-pod if you use Windows Media Player and WMAs, as you will need i-tunes and to convert all files.