I have been using a mini disc recorder for the past 5 years, refusing to get an i-pod primarily because everyone has got one, everyone raves about them & because I don’t really see what the fuss is all about, mp3 players do the same job and a lot of them look a lot nicer too. So, off I went to Argos, nectar card in hand to trade up & step into the 21st century. A friend had got this model and was showing it off in the pub last week so I had pretty much made up my mind; I was just waiting for my Nectar balance to increase enough that I could get it free. I had seen it in Tesco for £80 so I was pleasantly surprised to see it was on sale in Argos for the miniscule price of £60.

Once home I set it up immediately, CD in the drive, click next, next, next – yes, it’s that easy. It did take about 20 minutes to install the software but there were no glitches & it was soon all loaded, a quick reboot and I was off.

Next I had to transfer the songs from the library to the player. I pulled the top of the player & stuck it in my USB port, easy as that. As soon as the laptop recognised a new device a new window opened in the sonic stage program. It looked very similar to when you copy photos from a digital camera, a list of files with arrows pointing in both directions so you can move them across. I clicked auto move, another mistake as it only took about 4 songs from each album – no idea why. I highlighted all the songs on the players tab on the screen & deleted them all, choosing to manually pick the songs the 2nd time. This was much easier & again the little timer showed them gradually transferring across. Now I have 4 albums uploaded onto the player & I can start to mess about with the actual device.

Slider to hold, this stops you setting it off in your pocket
Volume – up and down (volume to 30 so you can increase/decrease quite specifically)
Backwards/forwards – to skip songs either way in the list, once menu is pressed this scrolls through albums & playlists
Play /Stop – to erm, play or stop
Menu – pressing menu requires using the other keys. If you hold menu down you are taken to the other features like edit playlist (buttons too small – do it on the sonic stage), equalizer, sports timer, clock.

There are headphones provided which are typical of Sony style, one short end so they can loop around the back of your head rather than a v shape. I am finding them annoying to store since the player is so small you have to wrap it around 20 times & then it gets all curly. The sound is full & rich, since theres no moving parts it doesn't skip songs so other than the feeling of plugs in your ears its just like listening to music straight from a cd player.

1) The sound quality is good although since its my first mp3 I cant compare it to anything other than my mini-disc (better, mostly because there are no record level variances)
2) It looks very nice
3) It was cheap
4) So compact I can take it everywhere with me unlike the mini-disc player which was quite heavy & required spare discs
5) Buttons are fiddly
6) Soundstage is a bit confusing
7) Easy to charge, 3hours playback in 3 minutes