Overview: This MP3 player from local firm EasyTech plays songs in MP3 or Windows Media Audio formats (WMA) laudably.

Design: Its plain design is more than compensated by the superb user interface - arguably its best feature - and excellent sound quality.

Software: The MN430 comes with a software driver that is required only if your PC runs Windows 98SE. Forget the driver if your computer runs Windows ME, 2000 or XP.

Sound quality: To gauge the audio quality, 15 songs totalling about 64MB of space were downloaded into the device. Genres included rock, jazz and pop, and were encoded in either MP3 or WMA formats with minimum bitrates of 128 kilobits per second (kbps) or 96kbps, respectively.

Despite the lower bitrate, the WMA tunes sounded pristine even when the device's equaliser was at the default Natural mode. Ditto for the MP3 ditties.

True to its solid-state design, the MN430 delivered skip-free music despite being shaken violently or dropped from small heights.

Ease of use: You can access any function just by using the jog dial and Play button. Don't bother with the user manual as the interface is intuitive.

Extras: The MN430 also doubles up as a USB flash drive for storing non-music data files. It's also a decent voice recorder - it filters out background noises so conversations can be heard more clearly during playback.

You can even speed up or slow down the rate at which a song or voice recording is played back - useful if your partner is speaking too slow or fast.

Reviewer's comments: The MN430 is great value at a reasonable price.