Online music service Slacker has just announced the Slacker Portable, a $199 device that lets you take its personalized stations along with you. The devices will come in in 15, 25 and 40 station capacities; each time you sync the Portable, songs from your favorite artists are loaded to the device; as with radio, you don't control which songs you'll hear. The company opted to go this route instead of using Wi-Fi to stream music to players, so listeners won't have to worry about dropping connections.

Some specs on the the Portable, from the press release:

Designed to work with Slacker Basic Radio and Premium Radio services
Personal radio stations play anytime: online or offline
Automatically refreshes personalized stations via Wi-Fi or USB
Heart and Ban buttons enable personalization on the go
4" color screen displays artist profiles, album reviews and large cover art
Available in 15, 20 and 40 station capacities
Plays your existing music collection (MP3 and WMA)
Up to 10 hours of playtime
Removable battery

The Slacker Portable Player is available for pre-order in the U.S. now at www.slacker.com at a MSRP of $199.99 (15 stations, 2GB), $249.99 (25 stations, 4GB ) and $299.99 (40 stations, 8GB) and is scheduled to ship on (or before) December 13th, 2007.

For those music fans who like to explore and listen to music they may not have heard before, this sounds like a lot of fun. PC Magazine's lead analyst for audio/video, Tim Gideon, will soon have a Slacker Portable in to review; we'll link to his writeup asap.