Xen EMP-200

With so many different portable digital music players on the market, what has the Xen EMP-200 got to warrant your consideration?

Is it the 256Mb of built-in storage space (good for about five albums' worth of tunes), its compatibility with MP3 and WMA files, or its built-in FM tuner? Perhaps it's the unit's size (not much bigger than a cigarette lighter) or the fact that it can be plugged into your computer via USB and used like an external hard disk to drag and drop audio files to and from the device? Maybe it's the voice recording or direct MP3-encoding features that allow you to use the device as a Dictaphone or record music directly from an external source?

We'd be lying if we claimed never to have seen any of these features before. What the Xen EMP-200 does have over other devices of its type is largely cosmetic - a tasty little brushed-metal casing and cool, ice-blue screen. The main trouble with the Xen is that, pound for pound, it's simply not competitively priced. You can, for example, get a hard disk-based MP3 jukebox, such as Creative's similarly-named Zen Xtra (issue 159) with more than 100 times the storage space for an extra £100.

Contact: MP3 Plus 01225 762137
www.mp3-plus.net