Call us trend-chasers, call us style-conscious, Cornelius Callus if you must. We like our iPods. We know, we know! We can’t help it. But just because an mp3 player’s your favorite, that doesn’t make it the right mp3 player for all occasions, does it? Well, does it?

You’re leapfrogging right it doesn’t. When we see people out jogging and rollerblading and mountain biking and kendo fighting with theirs, we’re reminded of a classic public service announcement: never shake a baby.

The Rio Forge is nobody’s baby. It bungee-jumped out of the womb on its own umbilical cord. It’s a full-on, straight-up macho homme sauvage. They say “it’s built to keep up with your active lifestyle,” but actually, it’s built to keep up with somebody else’s—somebody far more active. Take it with you when you run, bike or hit the gym; it can take it. It’s compact so sporty types can slip it into a pocket or wear it on the included armband in its handy carrying case. Like you, the Forge has no moving parts, so your music never skips. Never!

The Forge has a built-in FM tuner (which you can even record from). It’s got a battery life of around 20 hours. You can swap in SD or MMC cards to add up to 512MB more memory at a time. It has stopwatch and lap timer functions. Seriously—for active music listeners, it’s the bee’s anterior cruciate ligament. Just don’t let the tunes carry you away while you’re jogging in traffic, ‘kay?

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