Sweex Black Onyx MP4 Player 2GB review

At £47 including VAT, Sweex's 2GB Black Onyx is cheap for a video MP3 player.

It has a 2.4in LCD screen and is comfortable to hold, although its square shape feels chunky. Touch-sensitive controls to the right of the screen let you navigate the menus, but the button layout is confusing and the controls slow to respond.

The menu interface is ugly and badly designed. The FM tuner and voice recorder are useful features, but there was no obvious way of moving back to the main menu from the radio tuner screen. Audio and video tracks are listed by directory rather than by the track information in their ID3 tags, which means tracks by the same artist won't be listed together unless they are all in the same folder. The player has no hold key, but its additional power switch is easy to confuse for one.

Video file compatibility is limited to 320x240 XviD AVI video files with MPGA audio. The player is bundled with software to convert your videos to this format, but the version on the accompanying CD doesn't produce video of the correct resolution, so we had to download the latest version from Sweex's website. Because of the MPGA audio track, video files that work on the Black Onyx are unlikely to work on most other players, or even with most PCs' media player software.

Once we had converted and transferred some videos, we were pleased with the clear screen, despite its visible pixels. Audio quality was good and music sounded clear and balanced. Bass was powerful, but didn't dominate the sound at standard EQ settings. Midtones and high notes were well defined. The player supports MP3, WMA, and Wav files. We were pleased to find Sennheiser MX 300 earphones in the box, which are the best we've seen bundled with an MP3 player. Another bonus is the microSD card slot, which allows you to increase storage capacity.

Once it starts playing, the Black Onyx's default mode is to loop your entire audio collection. It does the same with videos; we prefer this to the behaviour of many players, which return to the menu after each video. Battery life for audio was a couple of minutes under 15 hours. Video battery life was a respectable two hours and 50 minutes.

Although it has good audio and screen quality, the player feels like a work in progress. Apart from the conversion software problem, we found the games menu doesn't work unless you find and download RKP-format games yourself. The sluggish and poorly implemented interface, with numerous irritations, means we can't recommend the Black Onyx, even at this price. Sandisk's Sansa e280 costs just £19 more, has 6GB extra capacity and a vastly better interface.