VIDEO: Portable music player round-up - under £50

We've recently been looking at a few of the most recent portable music players to come out for under £50.

You can read our full reviews of each of the players by clicking the following links, or see the video above to find out more about some of them.

Philips Gogear 4GB

Archos Vision 18

Sony NWZ-B152F

Creative Zen Style 300

A transcript of the video follows:

Budget MP3 players now offer some pretty advanced features. We've been taking a look at three budget options, all of which will set you back about £40.

These two, the Archos 18 Vision and the Creative Zen Style 300, both have colour screens and can play video and display photos. They also have FM radios and voice record functions. So, feature packed and just forty quid...amazing, right?

Wrong. Both certainly feel cheap, with somewhat shoddy designs and confusing menus. They're simply not nice to use, the buttons are unpleasant the screen quality is poor and playing video on either device is pointless as the screens are so small and such low quality.

The sound quality is on both the Zen Style and Archos 18 is also below par.

And that ‘flawed' feeling is further hammered home when you realised the Creative Zen doesn't have volume buttons.

Bafflingly, it does have a dedicated button for turning on a built-in speaker so everyone can enjoy your musical tastes. Sadly, or perhaps fortunately, the built-in speaker is really bad quality.

Both the Archos and the Creative Zen just feel cheap, which is what they are.

And that brings us to the Phillips GoGear.

For the same price, it takes a vastly different approach. A lot like the iPod Shuffle, this MP3 player doesn't have a screen and is ideally set-up for listening to music whilst exercising. Also, for the same price as 2GB of storage on the iPod, you get 4GB of storage on the GoGear. So it's pretty good value.

There's a study clip on the back to clip it onto your clothing and an easy to access play button. The design is excellent and it feels and looks like a quality product. The sound quality it delivers is also excellent.

Obviously the lack of a screen won't be for everyone, but out of the three MP3 players we looked at, this was certainly our favourite.