The title only covers part of what this unit can do, it can also record and play .wav files as well as having an FM radio, the reviewed version is less than £30 post free.
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The unit is tiny about the size of a lipstick at 7cm long and a little over 2.5cm across the weight is well under 50grams with its single AAA battery inserted. There is a 4x1cm LCD display that carries a multitude of information including ID3 tagging so whatever information you transfer with tracks from the PC is displayed.
On both sides of the LCD are three buttons and another the on/play button at the right side. There is a small booklet, however the symbols on the buttons are fairly self explanatory. There is a manual on a CD-ROM, also a driver but this will only be required by Windows 98SE users.
The end of the unit has a mini USB socket and not only is a USB to mini USB lead provided but also a neat USB to mini USB socket plug and if you have front facing USB sockets the latter is all you are likely to need. The device is USB2 but will work with USB 1.1
Plug in the device to a USB port and Windows installs a driver, you then have an extra drive in My Computer. You can drag and drop files to the unit very quickly and should it be required you can also use the unit as a mule to transfer files between PCs.
A reasonable set of earpieces are provided on a lanyard that also contains a FM radio, these are never great and rather directional but this one was better than others I have used. Should you wish to use your own earpieces or headphones they work just as well but only on the main unit as the FM radio is part of the lanyard with the earpieces.
The voice recorder is remarkably sensitive and I placed it in a room and talked across it to someone else and both our voices are clearly audible. These files are recorded at a low wav rate, but it is great for easy note taking. In round figures a four minute conversation takes around one megabyte of space. As this is a 128MB recorder you could in theory record well over 8 hours of speech at a single time.
As an MP3 player I transferred 130minutes worth of tracks (40 items) and they sounded great both through earpieces and a set of speakers. In theory WMA take half the space and are meant to be the same quality, that would be over 260 minutes of tracks.
A single AAA battery lasted around 7hours 20 minutes in my tests. You could use a rechargeable battery but as AAA batteries tend to be low power in comparison to AA offerings you would not get much time from them.
As an MP3 player this is good, as a voice recorder excellent, plus an adequate FM radio and earpieces and the bonus of being able to use it as a mule. The price is £29.99 for the 128MB version reviewed, but they also do 256MB and 512MB versions, just double the amount of content for each higher capacity item.
http://www.theupgradestore.co.uk/product.aspx?intRID=54&intCID=55&intSID=60&strURL=product_range.aspx&intIID=151
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