I purchased the Humax 9200T PVR (Personal Video Recorder) about two years ago, for the bargain price of £160, online. It's revolutionised TV watching, it's been so useful to be able to record programmes and watch them when you fancy, and to rapidly fast forward through adverts, or pause when the phone or doorbell goes.

I chose Humax because of all the good reviews online and especially because of its ease of use, it's definitely simpler than a lot of other models and brands I've tried to use over the years.

It's a super stylish looking set, smaller than the average top-box/recorder, in a nice shiny silver. It's very minimalist with just a few discrete buttons on the front of it and a barely there screen displaying what you are watching/recording.

The initial set-up was a bit complicated, after plugging it in you have to go through a lot of steps before it will even begin to pick up channels. The manual is pretty helpful for this however. One annoying problem is the fact that it is pre-programmed for conventional 4:3 TVs (who has those anymore??!) and so the quality is terrible until you figure out how to set it up as widescreen. However, once all set up if you leave it for 30 minutes it will pick up 90+ TV Freeview channels and many more radio stations, and then you're ready to get watching. The quality is fantastic, audio and visual.

The remote control is nice and simple, with all the obvious buttons on the top half and hidden away under a sliding flap there are about 20 small shortcut buttons. I have to admit even two years on I still haven't ever bothered to find out what many of the shortcuts do!

The guide is easy to access at the click of a button and displays five channels per page, for two hours of their schedule. This is one more channel than the previous Humax model (which I owned before upgrading to this one), and it makes all the difference to not having to endlessly scroll up and down to see what's on. Simply clicking on the programme you fancy with the OK button will record it. You also then get the option of recording the one programme or the whole series. Series link is a really useful feature and although it occasionally gets it a bit wrong (recording every single repeat of an episode throughout the week can get a bit tedious) it's really handy if you're absent minded like I am.

Clicking on a programme and pressing the 'I' button will give you detailed info about the TV programme whether in the guide, live or recorded modes. Simply pressing the record button will quickly record a programme you are watching. The pause and rewind buttons do the same, as up to 2 hours of the current channel you are watching are recorded automatically.

Flicking through the menu options to find the programmes you have recorded takes about three or four steps, but alternatively can be done with one of the shortcut buttons. Programmes are then displayed in descending date order and simply scrolling to the one you want to find and pressing OK will allow you to watch it. Programmes are easily deleted with the red button.

My favourite feature of the Humax 9200T is the find facility. Clicking on find in the guide mode will allow you to search for a particular programme by typing in its title (or part of its title) and all matches in the next week will appear. Alternatively you can search by genre. I particularly like to search the genre 'movies' at the beginning of each week and then I can easily record the ones I'm interested in.

The PVR has 160GB of memory, which is more than ample for all normal viewing. I've only ever filled it up about 70% when I've been away for a while and lots of films have taken up the space. It's never gone wrong, and it updates its software automatically through a wireless connection. Overall it's a great mid-range PVR.

This review also appears on Ciao under my username sbeach000