Without having an extreme view, there are certainly valid points on both sides. The N800 works well enough as a media player for most motivated owners, but no question it wasn't designed primarily as a media player, and it's not as convenient to use as a dedicated media player. The software and controls layout could be much better, and the existing apps only go part-way toward achieving that (of course since it's an open platform, feel free to respond "if you're so smart, where's your media player?").

I tend to forgive the minor shortcomings on video playback, because none of my portable video players are ideal from the viewpoint of performance and compatibility. The N800 does ok if you realize that a 400 MHz ARM processor isn't going to keep up with 800x480x30fps video. I'm prepared to re-encode as necessary. Video iPods only do fine because they have smaller screens and many video sources produce iPod-encoded video already.

I think the real strength of the N800 as a media player is the range of options available: a wide variety of video and audio players, built-in FM tuner, WiFi connectivity for internet streaming sources, connection to UPNP servers etc.