January may be a cold month across most of the country, but it was hot for music lovers. Manufacturers were pumping out MP3 players faster than Motown used to crank out hits. Even better, size, weight, and—most importantly—prices are dropping. And despite shrinking dimensions, some tune toters are managing to increase capacity. You may not be able to squeeze a quart into a pint bottle, but you can fit a ton of tunes into a few ounces.

Listeners who value style as much as sound will be pleased to hear that cheap extends to price, but not looks. The sound machines in the five reviews collected here have style to spare. The same holds for quality. Three hard-drive players we looked at—the Dell DJ 20, Dell Pocket DJ, and Gateway MP3 Jukebox—received ratings of four, as did the Flash-memory Apple iPod Shuffle. The hard-drive Archos Gmini XS200 pushed half a point higher.

The latest object of desire for iPod people is the signature-white Apple iPod Shuffle, available in 512MB or 1GB versions, both about the size of a butane lighter and weighing a miniscule 0.8 ounces. This highly competent player corrects sound-reproduction deficiencies of previous iPods and actually manages to do most competitors one better. Devotees of Apple minimalism will flip over the Shuttle, which pushes the principle to the edge. Other than a four-way rocker ring and play/pause button, very little disturbs the surface. In fact, there's no display. Songs play either randomly or in sequential order.

The Archos Gmini XS200 does one thing, but very well—it packs as much music as possible into the smallest volume. This slick, squarish, silver-and-chrome gem fits a 20GB hard drive into a 3.0- by 2.3- by 0.8-inch package that weighs just over 4 ounces. It's goal in life is playing MP3 and WMA files. There's a 128- by 128-pixel screen with two levels of grayscale and good contrast, but no FM radio, recording capability, or other extraneous features to add bulk. Sound quality, however, is as good as it gets.