however you could consider the sanza fuze? Its making waves for being a great sounding player and its less than 200 dollars.
i myself have tried it and it sounds significantly better than my cowon iAudio 7, which is already considered by many to be a great sounding player.
however the cowon EQ is much more powerful if you need to tweak really cheap earphones to sound okay. if you have a decent pair of earphones / headphones which dont need EQ, i would strongly recommend getting a sanza fuze.