The Datasafe oomi is tiny, roughly 30 x 45mm, and rounded off like a beach pebble. Despite its size, it’s still packed with features. 

The coolest feature of the Datasafe oomi is undoubtedly its display.

At first, you think it doesn’t have one, as the front is fully chromed and the player could easily work like an iPod Shuffle. However, press the play/pause button and little blue eyes will open and blink through the silver surface, illuminating the LED display.

The display shows equalisation and sound quality (bit rate) settings, battery level, the number of the track, its expired time and the track name, though not the artist. Four blue LED's flash in sequence round the control wheel when a track’s playing.

Cleverly, the Datasafe oomi uses the same socket for the USB 2 connection to your PC, as it does for the headphones, which cuts down on the amount of ports positioned around the player.

There are seven controls on the player, comprising a ring of four with the play/pause button in the middle and nipple buttons at either side for navigation, hold, menu and record.

It’s a shame the menu and record functions use the same button, as it’s all too easy to start a new recording when you just want to see the menu.

The player can record straight to MP3, so you can grab live sounds. Despite its diminutive size, it has an FM radio receiver built in, too. This needs a fairly strong signal to be much use, though.

Music playback is crisp and clear, though the bass response isn’t spectacular. The Lithium ion battery is claimed to last for 12 hours and as well as this 512Mb model, there are 1Gb and 2Gb versions, priced at £99 and £119 respectively.

The oomi comes with software called Music Friend 4, which is a pretty comprehensive music management and playback application. There’s also Mediasync, another file manager, but we couldn’t get this software to run.

Overall, this is a good little player with a certain wow factor, but we can’t see any real advantage to its diminutive size.

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Sony NW-E003
Verdict: Excellent battery life, but Sony's insistence on using its Atrac DRM holds this 1Gb player back
Rating: 3/5
Price: £79