Good morning, sunshine! I started Christmas shopping this week for my four boys. A big thing on my list is MP3 players.

First, a quick back story for you. My oldest two sons have iPods that we picked up as “refurbished,” basically they were as is with no warranty. I won’t make that mistake ever again. They are both pretty much dead in the water and if I send them back to Apple to get fixed they’ll charge me the cost of a new iPod, so what’s the point in repair, right?

It left me with a bit of a predicament. They really enjoyed having them while they lasted, but they were more hassle than they were worth. My husband’s iPod, which I bought straight from Apple brand new doesn’t have any problems, but these refurbished 2nd generation models just don’t cut it. They freeze, they erase themselves, and one of them refuses to be turned off, it’s just on 24 hours a day, so of course needs charged constantly.

So, my shopping spree to replace these lovely little things began. I figured I would pick up iPod shuffles to replace them. Then my 10 year old said magical words to me, “Mom, I don’t care if it’s an iPod or not, I just want music.” Dang, I love that kid.

His biggest complaint about his iPod, other than freezing screen, was that it didn’t have an FM radio to listen to. I thought about getting him just a small am/fm radio that he could stick in his backpack and listen to, but that just wouldn’t be as much fun if he couldn’t add his own music to it as well. After all, I’ve grown pretty fond of him cleaning his room and singing Kidz Bop songs on the weekends.

The Active Range Sport MP3 Player from Phillips solves a lot of that problem for me. And it comes in orange, which just happens to be Luke’s favorite color on the planet. It’s only 1GB, which is still a lot of songs. Who needs 8GB anyway? I’ll admit here that I’d like to see it be at least 2GB, because the boys do like to put audio books on their players, and the Harry Potter books are pretty big files. I don’t think those would fit onto 1GB. But, in defense of the player it does have a mini SD card slot for memory expansion, which is quite helpful.

I found the shape of this player quite intriguing, it’s round unlike the usual MP3 players that are square, rectangular, and pretty much any shape except for round. It also has a built in stop watch for those early morning runs, making it a little more sport than usual as well. So far there are some interesting features on this little wonder.

My favorite feature is still the FM tuner that’s built into the player. Digital files and a radio all in one little round piece of orange technology. However, with all this great stuff happening I found it odd that it runs on 1 AAA battery. I don’t know if that’s because of the FM tuner being part of it, or if there’s some other reason for it. I’m not sure how that all works inside, but it definitely has my attention.