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A lot of people seem to be blinded by the delights of the iPod and quickly gloss over what it cannot do. For me anyway I would certainly prefer any recent offering from Creative or Rio to anything I have seen from Apple the manufacturers of the iPod.

This is a tiny unit 7.5x6x1cm, it weights less than 100grams and considering the outside is chromium that is amazing.

The top has inputs for USB and earpieces as well as on/off button and jog wheel. The menu button is located just below the jog wheel on the right side and this is to my mind one of a very limited set of things that could be improved.

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The front has a four direction switch with the all important ‘accept’ in the centre. The Rio Carbon can also record .WAV files and the pin hole microphone is located around the top of the 3x2cm display.

I mentioned improvements they could all be resolved by changing the leather carry pouch. The Carbon fits tightly into this slip case and in order to remove it you almost certainly touch the menu button. Why would you want to remove it? Well the microphone is behind the leather case as indeed is the display.

When you first turn the unit on the four direction switch and the Rio logo above the screen all display a red glow, very with it. The screen is monochrome but backlit and this by default stays on for five seconds but this is one of numerous things that can be set in the menu as well as clock, stopwatch and far more items than this item has space for.

The solid battery lasts for 16 hours between charges, not just a marketing claim but one I fulfilled on several occasions that really is a ‘working day’. The unit can be trickle charged by connecting the supplied USB lead to a PC. However this unit also has a mains charger and a full charge from totally exhausted takes 150 minutes. The lead to the charger is the same USB lead and it fits into the USB input on the unit. This is the first device that I have seen that uses the USB port on the device for both trickle and full speed charging. Indeed I do not think I know of anything else using the USB lead itself to carry more than trickle charge down a USB lead.

I managed to fit just over 1200 tracks onto the unit, not the short pop type tracks and I suppose the average length was around five minutes. In another test I put exactly 1GB of tracks on the unit, this was 268 tracks and they took 17hours and 40 minutes to play.

Unlike the earlier Rio offerings this can also act as a mule as it appears as a drive letter in My Computer. I quite like the supplied Rio Player the only method of transfer for earlier unit, but now items can also be dragged and dropped to the unit. On start up it checks if new items have been added and recataloes . www.microdirect.co.uk have it for £164.44. The site below takes you to the USA but $249.99 with $20 cashback seems good, neither of the prices quoted include post & packing or possible duty.

Link http://www.digitalnetworksna.com/shop/_templates/item_main_Rio.asp?model=267