Lab

MP3 Players

How often do you find time to put your life on hold, sit down and listen to a CD? Perhaps this explains why MP3 players are so popular. What better way to while away time spent travelling or exercising than by taking the rare opportunity to lose yourself in your favourite music? Another reason for the rise of portable music players is that they're so much better than ever before. Being able to carry your entire music collection around in a gadget that weighs next to nothing is a truly liberating experience.

Some MP3 players contain hard disks, but the ones reviewed here use solid state memory chips, like digital cameras. These players can be incredibly small, but until recently they couldn't compete with hard disk-based players for capacity. Now, though, the falling price of solid state memory means they're catching up fast. Many of the players on test are available with eight gigabytes (8GB), enough for around 2,000 MP3 files, or five days of continuous music.

Most MP3 players are marketed on their appearance. We like stylish gadgets, but we don't think looks are the most important feature - and besides, you can see for yourself how cute the iPod shuffle is. (To help you judge the cosmetics, we've shown each player at actual size.) In our tests, we've concentrated on the things that are harder to tell at a glance.

Sound quality is a prime concern, but can be tricky to assess. The headphone outputs on the players are usually up to scratch; only one model gave us concerns in this respect. However, the EQ (equalisation) functions that help optimise sound quality often overload the output, causing distortion. This is particularly frustrating when the supplied headphones need heavy EQ to compensate for their uneven frequency response. Headphone performance is by far the most variable factor. A lack of bass is common for in-ear phones, and some sound weak and confused at other frequencies too. Poor headphones can be replaced, though, so it's not a fatal flaw.

Ease of use was next on our list of priorities. Some players are so friendly that they felt familiar to us in a matter of minutes, while others never stopped feeling awkward and confusing. Because these gizmos can store thousands of songs, a fast and efficient way to scroll through long lists of music is really important. Ease of use also extends to the software that's used for transferring music from your PC, and fast USB connections are welcome too.

Today's MP3 players have more features than ever: colour screens, video playback, FM or DAB radios, voice recorders - the list goes on. These can be great fun, but for us they're secondary to music playback facilities. After all, how much video would you really want to watch on a two-inch screen? Finally, one feature we do take very seriously is battery life.

Armed with these criteria, we set about finding the best and the best value players on the market, and found star performers for every budget.