If you absolutely positively must have the latest and greatest in mp3-playing technology, then this relatively cheap player is probably not for you. However, if street cred and status among your friends aren't a pressing concern for you, then you could do far worse than to invest in one of these.

They hold up to 4GB of music, which is more than enough to give you variety of listening as you go about your daily business. They've got various playback options, including one that plays all of your stored music on one giant loop, over and over. This is the one I use the most as it allows the most variety while letting me skip ahead to favourite tracks I know are coming up.

While small and lightweight, it doesn't have any fancy features that most of the newer (and much more expensive) mp3-players have, like video playback and wotnot, but it does have the capability of acting like a USB drive, useful for letting you take your data with you wherever you go without filling your pockets with an extra device. Unlike some mp3 players (I'm looking at you, Ministry of Sound), it takes standard headphones, and uses standard batteries, meaning there's not a specific cable that's absolutely essential and must never ever be lost (but always is within 6 months of purchase).

Downsides? Well, you'll get dodgy looks off people to whom a non-ipod mp3 player is an alien concept but hey, that's their problem, not yours. The only real problem with it, besides it being basic in terms of functionality, is that it has a short battery life if you don't use expensive long-life batteries in it. But for the price, that's not a bad list of shortcomings.

In all, it's a decent little mp3-player. It can't hope to compete with the likes of Creative or Apple, but if you're just after a simple gadget to let you listen to your music on the go and not do a whole lot else, then you can't really go wrong with this one.