Hyundai 4 in One

A hyperactive digital recorder that also plays music, takes snaps and stores data

Should you believe that your thoughts and opinions are so inspirational they deserve to be captured instantly for posterity, you'll find Hyundai's 4 in One a willing and pliant ally.

The device is the size of a Double Decker (the chocolate bar, not the bus) and has one button to start and stop recording; you can pause and resume as often as you like. Memos are automatically saved into one of two folders, and there are simple controls to help you navigate individual recordings (you can loop a hard-to-understand section, for example, or audition the first five seconds of all the recordings in a folder).

When you're tired of the sound of your own voice, the unit also functions as a simple fixed-focus point-and-click digital camera, plays back MP3 files (but not WMAs) and doubles (or should that be quadruples?) as a USB disk.

You'll need to install a software driver if you're still running Windows 98, but newer Windows users will find the 4 in One appears on the desktop as a simple removable hard drive. You can drag and drop files on and off it, though MP3s must be copied into the MP3 folder or they won't play back, and recordings need to be exported as WAVs using the supplied software, since the device saves them in a funny - though small - compressed format. Voice notes can be attached to photos, which can then be assembled into electronic albums or multimedia greetings cards.

Despite being of an undoubted jack-of-all-trades nature, it-s hard to see exactly who's going to be turned on by the 4 in One. The voice recorder is easy to use, responsive and makes listenable recordings (especially via an external mic), but is hard to navigate because you can't assign names to your memos (remember that this version can store 18 hours of easy-to-get-lost-in audio).

Worse, the camera's a flashless, antique 640 x 480 relic. And though the MP3 player has a nice cocky loudness, songs, recordings, photos and other data all share the same storage space, which - given that you can't expand the 4 in One - fills up all too quickly.