Verdict: An excellent and super-small 20GB player, but miniaturisation comes at a price

In the quest for smaller and lighter MP3 players most manufacturers have opted for the new wave of tiny hard disk drives.

However, the most common of these only offer 4-5GB, which is a little on the weedy side when compared to the bigger player's 20GB and 60GB disks.

The Cowan is an exception, though. The main body of the M3 is incredibly thin and light but there's a 20GB drive and the battery is good for up to 14 hours.

There's no screen on the player itself. Instead the Cowon relies on a remote control with a small blue-backlit LCD screen. This has obviously been designed so that you never need to remove the player from your pocket.

The Cowon comes with a range of features; as well as supporting MP3, WMA and OGG, a firmware upgrade enables it to play lossless FLAC files. It can also function as a voice recorder via a microphone built into the main body, perform direct MP3 encoding via a line-in jack, and has FM radio. Cowan also provides a dock, which has power, line in/out and USB connections.

The Cowon is picked up as a mass storage device in Windows, so it doesn't require any drivers. This makes transferring music a doddle, but unlike the Karma or Zen Touch, the Cowon has no ID3 database, so you have to use your own directory structure.

The sound quality is good, as is the battery life, bundle and extra features, especially as it's so lightweight.

However, the small screen isn't ideal, and the dual jog-dial interface to the intricate control system can take a long time to get used to. Navigation isn't fast or clear until you've spent quite a bit of time using it.

If you want minimum size but don't want to be restricted to only 4GB of hard disk space, the Cowon is a great choice. It's innovative, but you have to pay a bit extra for its slimline approach.

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