We've heard of designing gadgets for girls, but NEC's latest music and movie player takes the cake. Preferring not to spray the device metallic pink, the technique favoured for other female-friendly toys, the company has instead styled the 30GB hard drive-based VoToL PK-MV300 after a perfume bottle.

The VoToL sports a 2.7in, 320 x 240, 65,536-colour display on side and the player's name on the other. What might be taken for the bottle's cap is the main control, ready to activate selected MPEG 2, MPEG 4 and WMV 9 videos, and MP3, AAC, Ogg, WAV and WMA DRM audio tracks. NEC has built in an SD card slot to allow images taken on digital cameras to be copied across the VoToL's hard drive - the player will show JPEG, GIF, PNG and BMP images, and can text files too.

NEC said the new device sports an aqueous user interface - a "liquid GUI" that represents the player's volume , battery charge and other settings with a water-level visual accompanied by watery gurgling and plopping sounds.

The 188g player measures 12.3 x 6.1 x 1.8-2.2cm and contains a rechargeable lithium-ion battery good, claimed NEC, for four hours' video playback.

To be fair, NEC is pitching the product at trendy young Japanese folk of either gender - it reckons the VoToL has a suitable unisex look.

NEC said the VoTol will ship in Japan next month for ¥39,900 (£194/$339). ®

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