MPman MP-HD2

The Mpman MP-HD2 player is made by the inventor of the mp3 player back in 1997 and other makes such as apple and Rio seems to have stolen the limelight but just because you may not have heard of the company (I know I certainly hadn't) doesn't mean that they are no good.

It is a good little player for the price that is about the same size as the Zen micro. It was however, the first product out of four from mpman that were actually in full working order (hint hint: don't buy the mpki or the mpf100!!) but this one has worked perfectly as of late.

The rechargeable battery has lasted 11 hours for me on a charge overnight on the pc. (don't use the ps2 or Xbox to charge it they don't work) This is a reasonable battery life that is actually 1 hour more than it claims to give!? on the other hand the battery life indicator goes up and down too much to give an accurate reading so don't expect for it too give you any help.

This mp3 player is very easy to use on the pc. It does not come with software but windows media player does the trick and the player sorts out logical play lists for you automatically but you can modify them if u want. also, on every operating system apart from windows 98 and Mac the player is detected automatically so there is no need to install it (a windows 95/98 driver is included in the box).

This player does not have very many extra features, in fact, the only on I can think of apart from mp3 player is voice recording which is however very very good quality even though it takes a lot of battery up to do it as the hard drive has to keep turning in the process. Also, the joystick at the front to control various features of the player seems very pointless and frustrating which seems out of place with such easy to use and simple menus. But don't worry it doesn't catch on things even though it looks like it ought to.

Sound quality on this player is a bit dire. You have to have it on rock eq because otherwise it is very unclear. (complete opposite to the creative Zen touch). The headphones supplied were rubbish and the jack on them broke after 2 weeks of use but luckily I had some much better ones that vastly improved the sound quality but it still wasn't brilliant.

I though I would try customer service to see what it was like (because I am extremely sad as you would have guessed already) and four times out of five there was never any answer (five months on) so don't count on service for this player. I don't think that mpman are that great anyway because this is there best and most expensive player in the UK.

Finally, if you want a simple and easy to use player then this is (amongst others) the player for you. on the other hand, if you want an interesting player with many features but similar quality go for a colour screen iriver jukebox. That's my next player!