Cowon iAudio 6 MP3 player

The iAudio pumps up its specs and takes on the nano, but who's got the knock-out punch?

We were knocked out by the pure tech of this player. Instead of relying on Flash memory, Cowon has used a tiny, 0.85-inch hard drive to provide four gigs of storage to this video-showing, MP3-playing, nano-assaulting pocket jukebox. Unfortunately, the trade-off is a girth that's triple that of the nano.

To get videos onto the hard drive you must first convert them with Cowon's rather clunky software. It's worth it, however, as an episode of Lost looks surprisingly good on the small screen. Hold it extremely close to your eyes and it's almost like being at the cinema.

Cowon's players have always sounded great and this is no exception, but navigating your music library is a pain because tracks aren't categorised by artist, song and album title. Instead you have to find your way through them via a cumbersome file explorer, using up and down arrow buttons that are no match for Apple's Click Wheel.

Battery life is more impressive. We got around 18 hours of music and six hours of video from a single charge.

Ultimately though, despite providing impressive sound and vision, track navigation stops this from being a true nano-worrier.

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