Packard Bell Audiokey

Packard Bell has jumped on the MP3 player bandwagon with its Audiokey player, which is similar in principle to the Creative Muvo player.

The Audiokey is roughly the size of a small mobile phone and splits into two parts.

One part has the control buttons, a 32MB piece of Flash memory, a slot for Secure Digital (SD) and Multimedia Card (MMC) slots, headphone jack and a USB port to download the tracks from your PC.

The other part carries a pair of AAA batteries, an on/off switch and a USB socket.

The Audiokey installed without a hitch and you transfer files through Windows Explorer.

This is made a little complicated as the internal memory and SD/MMC card reader appear as separate removable drives even if there's no card in the slot, so you have to know which drive is which.

When you remove the player from your PC you also have to stop both USB devices to avoid Windows getting upset.

Inside, 32MB of memory is adequate for roughly 10 MP3s at 128kbps.

Once they're loaded the player switches into audio mode. Irritatingly, it only plays MP3 files - no wma or wav.

It can store data files, which could include wma or wav files, though obviously you can't play them back.

The three control buttons give the basic player controls and were simple to use. Sound was uneven, trebly and occasionally fuzzy.

We initially blamed this on the in-ear headphones that are supplied with the Audiokey, but changing to a pair of good-quality headphones didn't help matters.

As the volume was increased the quality got worse, and we found the experience quite unpleasant.

Contact: Packard Bell 01628 512 400
www.packardbell.co.uk

SPECS

• Storage capacity nominal 32MB (actual 31.1MB)
• Connection to PC USB
• SD card slot
• Mini-jack audio output
• 61g (without batteries)
• 117 x 35 x 29mm (w x d x h)
• Quoted battery life up to eight hours on zinc carbon batteries
• Software (inc drivers) Windows 98 drivers.