Top 10 worst products ever

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Posted on 12 Mar 2010 at 14:22

6. Ministry of Sound MOSMP085X10
The Ministry of Sound nightclub and subsequent record label were propelled to fame in the 90s after normally rational people decided that music that required talent and years of practice should be replaced by repetitive computer-generated crap. Even worse, clubbers fuelled by a range of recreational drugs decided to make heroes of the people that just put the music on (or DJs, as they're known).

With its record label doing stunning business - to date, it has sold more than 50m albums and singles (proving that many people can be wrong) - Ministry of Sound decided that what the world needed was one of its branded MP3 players. Step forward, the MOSMP085X10. This ranks as being one of the most awful and flawed products that we've ever reviewed.

The audio quality from this was similar to the quality of the 'music' played in the club: awful. Variable-bit rate MP3 files juddered and popped, while a standard 192Kbit/s MP3 that had a playing time of three minutes and 37 seconds, played in three minutes, 10 seconds. This may have been an attempt at emulating the high-adrenaline feel of nightclubs and made little difference to dance music, but real music suffered.

5. BatteryLife Activator
In 2005 we were sent two products in the BatteryLife Activator range: one for laptops and one for mobile phones. Consisting of a thin foil that you stick your device's battery, the claim was that life of any li-ion battery could be extended by up to 50 per cent.

How did it do this? We don't know, and neither did the manufacturer, telling us that the "precise mechanism or operation is not understood". You can imagine, then, how good the product turned out to be.

We were told by the company that the device worked best on batteries that had around 50 per cent of their original capacity. Testing on a 10-year-old IBM ThinkPad we found - surprise, surprise - no difference. Conveniently, we were told that this is because IBM batteries are "double-insulated". The BatteryLife Activator also failed to make any difference on any other laptop or mobile phone that we tested.

If you bought one of these products, please get in touch as Expert Reviews has some snake oil for sale.