After constantly changing batteries in cheap little mp3 players for our 6 year old, we decided for her birthday to find a nice rechargeable mp3 player for her.
Like her daddy does, she often takes her music to be and listens until she is asleep, but never turns her mp3 off!
After agreeing that an I-pod was a bit too much for a 6 year old, we set about looking for a cheaper substitute.

This Philips GoGear RaGa mp3 player caught my eye, mainly for its colours. It was a lovely deep red colour (although is available in other colours) but it also looked quite funky, not like an Ipod, but like a funkier version of the small I-pod shuffles.

The mp3 player is small, just under about 5cm high and wide, and has a small screen across the front which tells you what song is playing.
Underneath the screen, is a control pad, with shuffle, skip forward and back, volume, play/pause and on/off functions.

The mp3 player is availble in 4GB and 8GB memories. We bought the 4GB memory, my husband says it should hold between 1600 to 2000 songs!

The mp3 is rechargeable, it comes supplied with a USB cable that you just connect one end to the pc and the other to the mp3 and it charges up, apparently holding 20 hours of battery life when fully charged. Im not sure on exacts but the battery life is great, we charged it up overnight before giving it to our daughter, and she had it on play lots, and it was about another week before we needed to charge it again, although we cant be sure exactly how long she had it on in each go.

The mp3 comes supplied with a USB cable, earphones and software for the computer (although we have never tried the software, our computer installed the device without it and charges without it, too, so we have never installed the software) Although I have just noticed that it is compatible with Windows Vista, XP and 2000, there is no mention of the new version of Windows, so if you are running the new Windows it might be worth checking it is compatible with it.

My husband found it very easy to add files to the mp3 player, he just used a drag and drop function, opening the folder for the mp3 player and just dragging the files in, and they all stored on the mp3 player fine. I think we have added over 200 songs before we couldnt think of anymore, so the 4GB of space is more than ample for a child, and we are thinking of trying to see if it will hold an audio book (will update if it does!)

The volume on this mp3 is brilliant, there have been times when I have had to take it off my daughter as I can hgear her music crystal clear from the other end of the room, so I do have to set the volume for her before she blows her ear drums! It also means when we hook it up to her portable speakers, the volume she gets out of it is almost as good as our stereo system!

The 4GB version is currently selling in Argos for £24.99 and is definately worth the money, its cheaper than an I-pod but in my opinion looks better! At the moment, it may be a better option to go for the 8GB version as its currently selling for £27.99, so double the memory for just a few more pounds.