It’s a sad fact that glancing down the spines of your CD collection is still much the quickest way to browse your music. Using the tiny LCD screens on digital music devices still has some way to go, but the latest creation from Slim Devices makes some healthy steps towards the ideal.

With its slim vacuum fluorescent display, it offers a relatively high resolution of 320 x 32 pixels, and the menu system is mature and intuitive. Once you get used to the lack of an OK button, the cascaded menu system makes it quick to browse through even relatively large libraries. But the main advantage is the sheer speed at which you can browse even a huge collection: there’s a 250MHz eight-way RISC processor onboard, as well as 64MB of integrated RAM.

It sports a 10/100 Ethernet port and comprehensive 802.11g WLAN features including WEP, WPA and WPA2, complete with AES encryption. You can even use the device as a wireless bridge by plugging devices into the wired Ethernet port and setting the unit into bridge mode.

Connecting to a wired or wireless network is a simple process, helped by following the onscreen prompts. You also need to install the open-source SlimServer software on a network-connected PC. We’re disappointed at the lack of UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) compatibility, but SlimServer does at least support a few other devices, such as Roku’s SoundBridge series.

The device recognises MP3, WMA, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, MusePack and MP2, as well supporting lossless FLAC and uncompressed AIFF, WAV and PCM formats. There’s also integration with iTunes, MoodLogic and Winamp, although not Windows Media Player, and no flavours of DRM (including iTunes Music Store purchases) are currently supported. There’s full support for Internet radio stations, though, which can be configured through the web interface, and which will still play if the server is offline.

The back panel offers a healthy complement of optical and coaxial S/PDIF, as well as an analog RCA phono and 3.5mm headphone jack. Sound quality is backed up by a 24-bit Burr-Brown digital-to-analog convertor (DAC), and we had no complaints during use, with the only flaws in playback being from the source material.

There’s a bewildering array of options available: an alarm clock; a number of screensaver options during stopped and off states; different VU meter varieties, and the ability to show RSS feeds from popular news sites. The only criticism is that the last of these is jerkily scrolled across the screen, and it isn’t possible to edit the source of the feeds.

While there’s no doubting how useful and desirable the Squeezebox is to music lovers who have gone digital, the price for these devices is still on the high side. If you’re set on investing in the digital dream, these slimmed-down clients can’t touch devices such as the Sonos Digital Music System for sheer ease of use. But for a standalone unit, the Squeezebox is the most attractive and practical option we’ve yet seen.