The SlimX imp-550, from iRiver left us speechless in terms of the quality and design of this MP3 CD Player/FM tuner. Being possibly the thinnest CD/MP3 player on the market, this is also one of the more feature-packed.

Features voice recording and an FM tuner. The device can be fiddly to operate, and the LCD screen doesn't display any track information other than the title. There is no playlist management, and no directory structure for your tracks. Voice recording allows the sampling rate to be set up to 48,000Hz.

For the price, this unit doesn't have a lot going for it. It is clumsy to operate, and the display is too small. It has a slot for a Memory Stick, although a 'MagicGate' adaptor is required.

As the iPod continues to be enhanced, and storage capacity increased, we had a look at the latest from Apple.

A bog standard CD/MP3 player, with a minimal feature set. Apart from the typical controls such as resume, shuffle, repeat and so on, this player also has 'Digital Dynamic Bass Boost' which provides minimal strengthening of the bass signal.

Priced at the budget end of the MP3 Player market, this device doesn't perform too badly. Sound quality is acceptable, considering the price, and the preset EQs come in handy. The bass is reasonably full, the high tones are clean and not harsh, although the mid-range was a little empty, with just a hint of background hiss at higher volumes.

There is little to distinguish this from the EXP322, with the exception of a wired remote for basic track controls and the ability to play games on the LCD screen similar to black and white LCD mobile phone gaming. This model also buffers up to 420 seconds at 128Kb/s, providing a more exotic anti-skip protection than the 100 seconds of the EXP322.

The Targa TMU-401 MP3 player, whilst a little light in on-board storage, outperformed devices with larger storage capacities.

The JNC has a reasonable range of features, including FM radio and voice recording, although no capacity for storage expansion. It can be also used as removable storage, for any file type. The software includes a simple tool to format the device, a firmware upgrade utility and RealOne Player Gold. There is no support for playlists, however, unless created within the player itself.

This player has its own speaker which would be handy for instant playback of voice recordings. There is 128MB storage on board, with a MMC card slot, located in the battery compartment. The headphones clip over your ear, and are quite comfortable to wear.

The 20-30GB Nomad Jukebox Zen NX is Creative's latest hard disk-based MP3/WMA player; an evolution of predecessor, the Zen. The model we reviewed was a 20GB unit, which equates to around 667 hours of 64Kbps WMA encoding, or 333 hours of 128Kbps MP3 encoding.

With solid-state media still expensive and offering limited capacity, MP3 players with hard disks seem like the perfect solution.

Digital convergence is one of those irritating buzz phrases used to describe things like an Internet fridge. But every so often a product that epitomises the concept actually appears.

This is not the first CD-ROM-based portable MP3 player from MPZOO Indeed a previous model was reviewed in February of this 2001

The DAV310 from A-MAX Technology circumvents this limitation by being able to play MP3 tracks straight off a CD - just like your PC can.

While we didn't time battery consumption, the DAP turned in an amazing performance in this regard.

Samsung has made some noise recently about its MP3 players and this example is at the forefront of this product family.

The idea behind a MP3 CD player is probably a little ahead of its time. We first looked at the M3PO a few issues ago (issue 30, p95) and found some criticisms to go with the unit. Those criticisms remain, and we toss in some more with this second look.

As a portable music player the E-Sounds is a performer of the highest calibre across all styles.

When Sony released its first 'Walkman' back in 1979 the feature it pushed most was 'pocket-sized'.