So many people think of expensive ipods when they hear the term mp3 player. There are some great players made by other companies that are priced lower and perform better than ipods.
My favorite low priced player is the Sandisk Sansa Fuze. It is somewhat similar in size to the ipod Nano, however the Fuze has a micro SDHC memory expansion slot, FM radio, a built in voice recorder, better sound quality than the ipod Nano, and is around half the price of the Nano. It is listed as having 24 hour battery life(the same as the Nano), but in real world usage gets around 20 hours. A 4 GB Fuze sells for around $57 on Amazon, while an 8 GB one is around $69. One can buy an 8 GB micro SDHC memory card for it on Amazon for as little as $11. So for around $80, one could have a Fuze with 16 GB of storage.

Like the ipods, it comes with a low quality earphone. One can buy a decent earphone or headphone to use with it for as little as around $20. Some good $20 choices are the Koss Sportapro headphone, or the Sennheiser CX300 earphone.

Sony and Samsung also make some nice players, however those are more expensive and none of them have memory expansion slots.

Cowon(a young Korean company) makes the D2+, a high quality player with a full sized SDHC memory card slot. The D2+ has battery life listed as 52 hours. It is one of the most powerful mp3 players in terms of power output, and will even do a good job of powering most full sized not so efficient headphones. An 8 GB D2+ is around $125, while a 16 GB one is around $150. One could buy a 16 GB SDHC card for around $32, and together with an 8 GB D2+, have a great 24 GB player for around $160, or they could but a 16 GB D2+ and a 32 GB card for around $240 total, and have a great player with 48 GB of storage. You can also find the D2+ on Amazon.

One major downside of these other brands of mp3 players. They will not play protected music purchased through itunes. They will play protected music purchased from other online music stores or music from your CDs(made into mp3 or WMA files).