Philips GoGear HDD6320 MP3

Touch me now! Philips is back in black, with this tactile music machine

Philips has been pretty quiet on the music player front of late, but now it's back with the HDD6320 -- a 30GB MP3 player with the ability to display images and a novel and mmm, so chic interface.

There's space for around 7,500 songs on the hard drive, but what really sets this apart is the interface: the whole of the front acts as a virtual control surface. In the centre is a touch strip, which lights up wherever you place you finger on it. It's straight out of a Sci-Fi movie, albeit an old one -- think Tron or Logan's Run rather than Revenge of the Sith.

The player doesn't come with any software for copying music to the hard drive, instead making use of the "Sync To" feature in Windows Media Player. The sound quality is quite beefy -- the doomy post-punk tones of the Editors' album sound fantastic via the excellent bundled sound isolation headphones.

There's no video playback on this model, but Philips has added a colour screen and the ability to show digital photos. Pictures look crisp and sharp on the screen, but it's not as big or as bright as the one you'll fi nd on the latest iPod.

As you might expect, the shadow of the iPod falls heavily on this player. For starters, the Philips feels chubby in your hand compared to Apple's willowy offspring. Also, for all its techno-fl ash, the control strip just isn't as intuitive as iPod's Click Wheel and some features feel weird. For example, why are the volume buttons on the side when the touch strip could have been used instead?

Therein lies the problem. As good a machine as this is, why on earth would you choose to buy it when the superior 30GB iPod is a tenner less?