The Archos Gmini XS200 doesn't do any more or less than an equivalent 20GB iPod or Dell player, but it's both smaller and less expensive. Its solid feel belies its 4.3-ounce weight, and the silver-painted metal case with chrome accents feels substantial and doesn't show fingerprints. Although we uncovered some sonic flaws in the XS200, they're not enough to be a deal-breaker.

Our audio tests go deeper than they did six months ago when we last reviewed the XS200, and we found that the player adds distortion on some of its five EQ settings. But it's hardly the only player out there with this problem. (We found similar problems in the Apple iPod, Dell DJ 30, and Toshiba gigabeat MEG-F60). The Rock and Techno settings are the worst, with clearly audible distortion, and muddy bass and hissy sibilants caused by harmonic distortion. Jazz and Classical are clean, and the five-band custom EQ setting is adequate as long as you don't push the sliders beyond a 4 dB boost or so. On the clean settings, the XS200 sounds good and drives its earbuds with authority. We measured 104-dB peaks on our test song. It's not the most powerful player we've encountered, but it has enough in reserve for music peaks and for percussive instruments like the piano.

We like the Archos file system a great deal because it doesn't require any special software on the PC side. You plug in the USB connector and copy songs and folders of songs to the XS200's hard drive. The player's ArcLibrary software indexes the songs by artist, title, album, genre, and year, and you can set it up to index automatically when you add songs or to reindex at any time. ArcLibrary also lets you build playlists on the fly, and you can even move files, create folders, and do other file maintenance chores, although naming folders with the virtual keyboard is tedious. Another nice feature of the XS200 is that, unlike the Dell DJ 30, Samsung YH-925, and Toshiba gigabeat, it's compatible with Mac OS.

The provided earbuds are slightly deficient in bass, but comfortable. They have a handy in-line volume control. The XS200 plays back MP3 and WMA files at up to 320 Kbps, and also handles VBR. With 20GB, we'd like to see lossless compression, too. But we'd put distortion-free EQ at the top of the engineers' list.

Compare the above products side by side in our comparison table