Tatung Elio review

Manufacturers of consumer electronics seem more convinced than us that there's a market for hard disk photo jukeboxes.

The Elio is Tatung's entry into a sector that already includes models by established manufacturers Apple and iRiver.

The Elio has a 2.2" colour LCD that sits near the top of its highly polished black front panel. This looks rather sleek but is prone to reflections and prints from clammy fingers. Most major controls are assigned to four round buttons that surround a four-way rocker switch, in the centre of which is a backlit circle that changes colour. While it's possible to copy files to the Elio's 20GB hard disk using Windows Explorer, you can't listen to music copied in this way. Audio files are stored in a hidden folder and can't be browsed by filename.

To transfer music you must use Tatung's Media Manager software, which isn't the easiest program to use. You can't drag and drop music on the Elio, for example. Unless you rip music using the Tatung software or define your own playlist, songs are played alphabetically within each album according to the track title in their ID3 tags.

The Elio's battery lasted an impressive 11 hours and 51 minutes playing our standard MP3 and WMA files. Playback quality is fine at the Flat EQ setting, but there is no custom mode and many of the presets sound poor. It's possible to record audio through a microphone, but there's no line input.

The Elio does a better job with image files, which you can simply drag across using Windows Explorer. You can also display or copy them from an SD card inserted in the player's slot, or transfer them directly over USB from a camera that supports Photo Transfer Protocol (PTP). The Elio itself only displays JPEG images, but it can store any content from an SD card.

Images look good on the Elio's screen but are properly visible only with the battery-sapping backlight switched on. Even then, with a viewing area that's little bigger than a passport photo, this isn't the best way to display or share photographs.

The Elio is best seen as a photo storage device that plays music, and it could be a useful backup tool for keen digital photographers. However, with only a 20GB hard disk it isn't as good value as the iRiver H340 we reviewed in What's New, Shopper November 2004, and that's a better audio player.