Jens of Sweden MP-500 review

While not quite as slim as the iPod Nano, the MP-500 is still tiny and extremely light.

The player is made of plastic, but it feels very solid and doesn't flex or creak. You control it using touch-sensitive buttons and while these are responsive, the interface is a haphazard nightmare at first. The function of the buttons changes randomly according to which menu you are in and there doesn't seem to be any logic behind what button does what. Downloading a firmware update from the Jens website fixes some of these problems, but it still took an hour or so to get used to its layout.

The MP-500 has a gigabyte of storage - enough room for around 250 songs - not that much for this price. When you plug the player into your PC's USB port, it appears as a hard disk, so you just drag music onto the player to copy it across and no extra software is required.

The MP-500 has built-in stereo speakers, which sound excellent considering the player's size. Although the player doesn't come with headphones as standard, several different types can be purchased from Jens of Sweden's website. We were supplied with the Koss Porta Pro set (an extra £22), which sound incredible. The sound is deep and rich, and better than any portable music player we have seen.

When you get bored of your own music, you can switch to FM radio mode, which has an autoscan tuner and preset mode. It's even possible to record tapes and records onto the player using the line-in recording function, which converts any audio source to MP3, or record voice memos with the integrated microphone.

The MP-500 also makes a reasonable stab at playing video files. An encoder converts any MPEG-1, WMV or AVI file to a compatible size and format. The small screen means that you will never get immersed in a film, but it's good enough for the odd TV programme or music video.