Hi there...Ive been lurking around here ALOT lately because I had a similiar situation...
initially I had the H340 at the top of my list, then after some time, I started to feel that its fast becoming an old DAP and Iriver dosent seem to be developing down this particular route of a good sounding large capacity player...support was of high priority for me and iRiver seem to be lacking not only technical support but also 3rd party accessories...also, its impossible to find a h320 now(locally for me) and the rare h340 is more than the price of a 60gig 5g crappod...
then I had my sights on the X5L, with the superb battery life, good case and tonnes of features but upon research, found that the line out was kinda inferior with an equally inferior subpack...plus the joystick was also kinda problematic...
the thing that put me off the most is the fact that I would be amping the player, thus amping from the headphone out would render the remote useless + you would need to take out the player more oftenly + use the weak joystick more frequently...the screen was also kinda weak when compared to the newer players...all these just kinda seem to generate more problems then they should...rockbox for this unit is also probably gona take much more time? and also like iRiver, technical support/accessories was a large tad inferior...
hmm...creative...even tho Ive used a nomad and currently a muvo, Ive come to believe that the quality of these players are are not something I would want to see in my next DAP...as much as I liked them before, I tend to steer clear from them now, and I admit its partially because of the design which I tend to find "weird".
then I started to edge towards the dark side...the ipod 5G seem to be doing pretty well according to some pple here...sure its got a scratch magnet case, lousy itunes requirement, inferior battery life, but on the plus side, rockbox is already developing pretty well meaning most of the -ve points can be removed from the ipod, but most imptly(for me), its got loads of official support(abeit costly) and the amount of 3rd party accessories are only what the other brands can dream of...im not really referring to the cosmetic skins fanciful speakers here, but things like external battery packs, user replacable battery, user replacable harddisk, etc...and it seems the SQ from the 5G is not that far off when properly amped/matched...Im now actually looking beyond the aesthetics of the ipod, but more on the real life issues that affects a DAP...so many people are now trying to find EOL players(rio), pray their old player dosent age out(h120/140) or for the matter of fact find new/better battery/harddisks...I just visited a site that still stocks high capacity battery from 1G to 5G...thats just too much for me to take, and not to forget the more than decent video capabilities on a 30g/60g harddisk...
end of the day, you got to go according to your priorities...if SQ is that impt go listen to all of them and see if you can hear the difference...features wise you got to see what you REALLY need the USBOTG/FM/etc...
as you can see at the moment, Im pretty much leaning towards the ipod 5G(still deciding tho)...rockbox, 60gigs of space, decent video, decent sound, wide range of replacable/additional parts available is almost too good for me...
lol...thats alot of raving I have...guess its all the regurgitation after I leeched so much here the last few days...
p.s. disclaimer: all the above is IMHO only...I am by a far cry compared to the other veterans here...