Orb A3188 ( from £24.99)

The Orb A3188

Sound quality is precise and doesn't distort even at higher volume levels. There is a choice of seven different EQ modes including Normal, Rock, Pop, Classic, Soft, Jazz and DBB. The Blue Orb A3188 offers a variety of playback and repeat modes: Normal, Repeat One, Folder, Repeat Folder, Repeat All, Random, Intro. The A3188 also features a built in sleep timer and off time mode.

Ideal for students looking to record lectures or business people needing to record important meetings, the A3188 allows over 72 hours of voice recording with VOX record support. With the handy mid-track resume function, the player will automatically restart at the point in the music / audio track that it stopped.

The Orb A3188 MP3 Player now supports secure WMA DRM files - meaning that it'll play music from most legal music download websites like Napster, HMV etc. Great features at a great price!

A great value player with sturdy build quality and impressive sound quality.

Click here for details of all memory capacities available in the Orb A3188 arange (128MB, 256MB, 512MB, 1GB & 2GB).

Tomahawk SH101 (was £89 now £79)

The Tomahawk SH101

The 3D icon driven menu system is a breeze to use and the colour screen makes navigating around the player extremely intuitive. Build quality is robust and the joystick on the front of the player aids navigation. An FM tuner and a voice recorder complement the Tomahawk's feature set. Built in USB 2.0 support allows the entire memory to be filled up in a couple of minutes.

It is remarkable the abilities the manufacturer has managed to squeeze into the casing of the Tomahawk SH101; a miniature multimedia movie player in the palm of your hand.

Tomahawk SH101 1GB Colour is currently supplied in metallic silver colour.

So Simple, So Fun!
Not only does the WALKMAN Bean look totally hot, it’s so much less complicated than all the other players out there to use, meaning that you can be listening to your fave tracks in no time…

Here’s the technical bit! The WALKMAN Bean comes with an inbuilt pop-up USB plug which means that when you hook it up to your PC, you don’t even have to hunt around for a wire as it connects directly. Easy and convenient!

What’s more, it’s simple and superfast to charge up. Faster than all the other players on the market, you only have to charge it for 3 minutes to get 3 hours’ playback from it, though if you charge it to capacity you’ll then be able to use it for 50 hours non-stop. Wow!

With your WALKMAN Bean you can do all the things you usually do like jogging or dancing as it won’t skip, plus its cool clear and stylish ‘1 line bright OLED display’ – that’s its display screen! – means you can easily scoot around your tracks.

More and More Music
Your beautiful WALKMAN Bean arrives with Sonic Stage 3.2 software, making it easy to store, transfer and update all your tracks on your PC. The Bean is perfect in every way.

It’s tiny, unique, looks cool and you won’t find it anywhere else in the UK. That’s great, but means nothing if the Pebble doesn’t live up in the sound quality department. When we first tested the Pebble, we thought our sample unit must have been faulty – even at half volume the player nearly blew our ears off! We were wrong – this thing is loud. A controlled, intense sound output power that anyone who appreciates true sound quality will love. The Pebble drives an impressive 20mW per channel – that’s 40mW total sound output. To give you an idea, this is more power than many hard drive MP3 players. Even the supplied jet black earphones are pretty good, pair the Pebble with a set of Shure e2C earphones and you will be transported to audio heaven – precision, power and startling audio clarity. This is an MP3 player that you will want to listen to. The Pebble supports various built in sound customisation and enhancement systems including a selection of preset EQ modes, user customisable EQ along with DBB and 3D sound functions – customise the Pebble to suit the type of music that you like to listen to.

Surely the Pebble is a bit light on features – it is only 3.2cm wide after all? Wrong – as well as multi-codec support (MP3, WMA and ASF), the Pebble features an ultra sensitive voice recorder along with an FM tuner and FM recorder. Make sure you’re in an area of strong FM radio reception – the player uses the headphone lead as an antenna and could pick up 2 – 3 local radio stations in our tests. Again, you would expect comprises on navigation, instead the instantly intuitive multi-function control buttons on the front of the unit make navigation a breeze. There are also two handy control orbs on either side of the player, making controlling the Pebble instant. No more worries regarding buying batteries again and again – the Pebble features a built in lithium polymer rechargeable battery which will keep on pumping out the tunes for at least 12 hours. The ingenious design of the player means the headphone jack (3.5mm – any headphones will work with it) also doubles as the USB port further shrinking the player’s depth. You won’t be waiting long for songs to download either – the high speed USB 2.0 connection (50Mbps) is lightning fast. In our tests, we could download a full album in around 12 seconds.

Weighing an awe inspiring 20g – you can barely feel the player in your pocket, the Pebble is perfectly suited for jogging or exercising. The Pebble includes a free luxury lanyard headphone adapter allowing the player to be easily worn round your neck using your choice of earphones. The screen of the Pebble could easily have been its Achilles heel - however, the manufacturer has made sure that the screen is perfectly large enough to ensure easy viewing (the screen takes up nearly half of the player’s front body). Since it’s a reverse OLED screen (bright blue text on a black background) it’s versatile and viewable in either direct sunlight or at night using minimal power. The display also auto powers off (user definable) after a few seconds if you haven’t been pressing any buttons. However, the cycling operational blue LEDs which circle the navigation button on the front of the unit light up and show that the unit is operational and playing back music (similar to the glowing function of the Creative ZEN Micro).

Working with both PCs and Macs, with multi-language support, unlimited folder navigation and a built in Sleep Timer and Stopwatch – the Pebble continues to impress. The 512MB of built in flash memory (no music skipping ever) allows you to hold over 250 music tracks. to It sounds awesome, looks unbelievable but the Pebble is more than just another MP3 player – it’s an example of true 21st century technology; a miniature marvel.