The speakers on any handheld suck, although GP32's suck slightly less. The GP32's speakers cannot even begin to match the quality you would get with headphones. If you have trouble keeping headphones with you at all times, and find "in the ear headphones" very annoying, get the "over the ear headphones" that I have. They have no headband, so are extremely compact, while retaining the comfort of additional headphones (unless you have exceptionally small ears, mine are average size).