Review Sony has an uncanny knack of coming up with the 'must-have' products of the moment, seemingly unhindered by their high price tags. The Music Clip digital music player maintains this trend - it's delightfully dinky, but has a less-than-petite price tag.

Styled in the eye-catching silver and purple Vaio livery, it proves yet again that Sony has its finger on the pulse. Not only is this digital music player the height of consumer chic, it’s also stunningly practical.

At only 33g and no bigger than a marker pen, this is the most portable player by far. Compromises have been made to keep the player small, so it's light on features. The LCD screen and buttons are kept to a minimum, but there's enough onboard functionality to satisfy. It doesn't offer the range of options that you'll find on other, larger players but, as a result, using the Music Clip is simplicity itself.

Though it's only powered by one AAA battery, the Clip asks little of it because there are no internal moving parts, and you can get around six hours of battery life. You're also assured smooth playback because there are no mechanisms to jog.

The 64MB of embedded Flash memory can store up to 120 minutes of music. You can also put music from normal audio CDs on to the Clip - the bundled software compresses tracks using a technology called ATRAC 3. This reduces the format to a tenth of its original size - about the same as MP3s - so it will hold about two average length music CDs.

The Open MG Jukebox software bundle does the work, which may not be a total music management solution on your PC, but it's fairly versatile.

For the same money it's possible to buy players with much more storage and functionality, but none of them is as portable or as good-looking as the Sony MC-S50. ®

Info

Price: £229
Contact: 08705 111 999
Website: www.sony.co.uk

Specs

Internal memory: 64MB
Battery: 1xAAA
Dimensions: 22.4x25.9x99mm
Weight: 33g
Warranty: One-year return-to-base

All details correct at time of publication.

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