I have come to the conclusion that you can't go far wrong with a nice iPod Shuffle. I've had an iPod Nano 1st Gen - sat on the screen and broke that one - and an iPod Touch 1st Gen - Apple software got too up to date and the whole thing crashed - but my shuffles are just plain great.

Remember the long thin white ones? I have one of those too, but the 2nd gen is my favourite. Firstly I love the fact that it can clip on to whatever I'm wearing. I couldn't stand to wear a big arm band for my iPhone when out running, but this is nifty and you'll forget you're wearing it.

The controls are really simple too. I mean yes there is no screen so you can't go through and select a song that way, but if you're like me you are going to spend so much time listening to this thing that you'll know your playlist off by heart anyway. Or if you are a risk taker, you can mix it up with the shuffle function. Win:win situation.

If looks are important to you then these are great too. Not amazing if you are a poser, but I reckon you're less likely to get mugged for one of these than an iPhone because it's so discreet. That is assuming that you change the white headphones that it comes with of course; those are a bit of a give away.

My shuffle must be 4 years old now and it's still going strong. It wasn't expensive, although I could maybe have gotten a similar MP3 player for less, but it's given me so much music back.

Also, you get iTunes. As somebody who buys music rather than downloading it illegally, I love iTunes. Only once have I not been able to find a song on there that I wanted. It's really simple to put music onto your Shuffle, although I sometimes have problems trying to sync from two different libraries - iTunes won't let you do that. I'm sure that you can find a way around it on Google, but I'm not really bothered.

The battery life is great and you can just connect it to your PC to charge; doesn't take long at all. As if all of the above wasn't enough, the Shuffle comes in loads of funky colours - I have a blue one but there's red and pink and green too amongst others.

The only downside that I can think of to the Shuffle itself, is that it is maybe a little small. To say that I really love mine, I don't actually know where in my room it is right now.