Now this is a clever idea. How many times do you travel and someone does not have their own mp3 player or wants to borrow your CD player to take to the beach, leaving you fumbling with another activity. It can happen on planes, trains and automobiles and also at home. Belkin have come up with a rather nifty little solution in the form of the Headphone Splitter. The name kind of gives it away, you have a central unit that allows the integration of up to five headphones and a playing device.

One one plug in the mp3 player and then attach headphones into the free sockets, so you could have main player running and several people all enjoying the music at any one time. What I especially liked about this invention was the ability to also run one or more mp3 players through it, giving you even more versatility.

The unit is lightweight and easy to carry around and would thus be ideal for travelling or taking abroad. The setup is also straight forward, as you simply plug into a port with the headphone leads and then you are free to start listening. Obviously, the port needs to be placed somewhere where all people can reach it, so in this instance, make sure your headphone cable is of a sufficient length or you would all be huddled around it. We tried it in the back of a car and it did a fine job, especially if you leave the mp3 player on shuffle, that way nobody dictates what is playing.

The sound quality is pretty good, though each additional headphone insertion causes a slight drop in sound but nothing to panic over. The main selling point here is the way you can share sound on trips and this for me is going to be great for the next holiday season.