MP3 PLAYERS

Over the past few years, the adoption of MP3 has been phenomenal. Originally reserved for those who dared to use IRC and FTP file sharing, it was too technical for the average Joe to really take on. So when record companies started getting angry at Napster, this was quite possibly the biggest advertisement MP3 could have had. Unless you lived in a hole in the ground, everyone now knew about MP3.

Whether the record companies like it or not, MP3s have become part of everyday life for even the least technical of people. With it has come a stream of commercialised, legally downloadable music, CD rippers and, of course, dedicated MP3 players.

The first MP3 players had barely enough storage for one album, but as technology moved on, capacities increased and hard disk based players are now commonplace.

However, first-generation hard disk players were large and nothing more than laptop hard drives in cases that would make Baldrick look attractive. Since then, the technology has matured and hard drives are now available at a fraction of the size and cost. Some of the players on test here are the same size as some solid-state MP3 players, yet have 20GB or more of storage.

The benefit of the higher storage capacity is that you can now carry practically your entire CD collection around with you on a device that's barely larger than a mobile phone. You can listen to all your favourite cheesy Christmas tunes to get into the festive spirit, or just random play everything and rediscover a few musical gems that you'd long forgotten.

As the compression technique used to create MP3s does remove some of the subtleties in music, making the most of each player requires a decent set of headphones. That's why we've tested all the MP3 players in this Labs test with a set of high-quality Sony headphones, as well as the bundled headphones to see how good they are too.

So sit back and start ripping your favourite CDs, as we explain which MP3 wannabes successfully hit the high notes and which would make Simon Cowell cringe with despair.