Portable video players are no longer rare, and while some manufacturers have sought to make their products stand out with outlandish designs, Philips has taken another tack, offering a simple-looking product with some good features.

The SA5285 holds up to 8GB of music or video, which amounts to around 4,000 songs. Although it looks like its predecessors in terms of the sleek black sleek case, it does have a bigger colour screen, which at 2.8in is big and clear enough to be easily readable, as well as being large enough for watching films without straining the eyes.

It also has clever search keys, which worked well, letting us whiz through our music library. However, although the menus were clear, the buttons and interface were sometimes a tad sluggish and nowhere near as smooth as some of the competition from, say, Sony and Apple.

Setting up the device was extremely easy and installing the software took just under two minutes. The SA5285 works with Windows Media Player, which we used to transfer our songs and video onto it easily. It also supports MP3, WMA and iPod-format files as well as MPEG4 video.

The sound through the supplied headphones was also rather good. The bass was just right and even at full volume it wasn’t tinny. This could be because the device has Philips' Full Sound audio-enhancement technology, which it says improves the audio quality.

Our problem with the headphones was that the manual claimed they would isolate the wearer from external noise, but we were disappointed on this point, as we were still able to hear everyone around us when listening on the train (and all the announcements, which was probably for the best).

Battery life covered about 30 hours of audio playback or five hours' video playback time. For £99, the SA5285 is not a bad buy but it's really more of a budget no-frills player compared to the more polished likes of the iPod or the Creative Zen range.

Add to that the price of some decent headphones and the price begins to look a little less attractive, although if you want video and music playback and nothing else this player is still a good one.