When Sony released its first 'Walkman' back in 1979 the feature it pushed most was 'pocket-sized'. Although most early models required a bigger than average pocket, Walkmans nevertheless represented a massive leap forward in portable audio technology. Almost twenty years on and an entirely new round of portable music players are being released onto the market supporting the MP3 format. Most of these are far smaller than their cassette-spinning counterparts.

The Pine D'Music SM-320V is just 63 x 85 x 17.5mm in size and weighs a mere 63g. But don't let its size fool you; an MP3 player doesn't need to be any bigger. It has no moving parts and only has to be large enough to support a few buttons, 32MB of onboard memory and a display, which incidentally on the D'Music player is quite big despite its diminutive size.

As is often the case, the supplied headphones do the player no justice. The pair supplied makes most tracks sound tinny. They also render the EQ presets useless, as all but the 'Classic' setting seem to make the sound thinner than before. After plugging in some quality headphones however, things start to sound a lot better.

Connecting to PC through the parallel port, the supplied software had no trouble detecting the player and the chosen memory (32MB internal flash memory with the option to upgrade to 64MB through an external memory slot). The software is designed to be very basic but it works perfectly, its best feature being multiple downloading. You simply access the folder where you store your MP3s, drag all of them into the download box and they automatically begin to download onto the player.

I managed to fit eight tracks, averaging around three to four megabytes in size onto the player, each taking roughly three minutes to download. Most MP3 players will soon come with a USB connection as standard. But the fact that the D'Music player is not USB isn't too much of a problem as the parallel connection allows smooth and relatively quick downloads.

The player also sports an up load feature, allowing you to use the flash memory as a mini-hard disk for your music. There is also a small onboard microphone, which transforms the player into a dictaphone capable of storing over two hours of voice recordings.

For a tiny piece of hardware the D'Music player packs a lot of features. Unfortunately, the software doesn't come with any ripping or encoding facility, meaning there is no way of gleaning tracks from your favourite CDs. However, this sort of software can be freely downloaded from the net. My only real disappointment was the actual feel of the player. The case is made of plastic inexpensively sprayed to look like metal. Also, because of its feel and size, it is hard to believe that this tiny box is capable of playing high quality audio. If the D'Music offering was encased in a more rugged, perhaps metal material it would become a far more attractive contender in the small but competitive digital MP3 player market.