Sony NW-A1000 MP3 player

There's more to Sony's 6GB jukebox than tasty design.

With its sleekest, most stylish MP3 player yet, Sony is finally hoping to make an impact on the portable music scene. But has this hard disker's thunder been stolen by the iPod nano?

Well, the nano might have grabbed all the headlines, but this is a different beast, with a 6GB hard disk as opposed to the top-of-the-line nano's 4GB of flash memory. It's �20 cheaper and there's no colour screen for viewing photos - this is purely a music machine.

Sound quality is excellent - not quite as detailed as the iPod's, but more bassy and three-dimensional, which is very obvious with tracks such as Banquet by Bloc Party, with its heavy beat and clear stereo effects. Apple owners will also be green with envy at its removable battery, which averages about 20 hours.

The menu system is simple to navigate and the screen is clear, even in strong sunlight. Searching for tunes is made easier by being able to skip through the alphabet rather than having to scroll all the way down the list.

The new Connect Player software is an improvement on SonicStage, but it's still not as clean and intuitive as iTunes. File transfer is also fairly quick as well, at 30 minutes for about 1,500 tunes.

The only annoying thing is that the unit automatically switches off after just 20 seconds of inactivity - and you can't change this. It means that if you pause a track for long enough and then turn the device back on, you have to start it from the beginning again.

Despite that irritation, though, this is a superb player that looks great and is very simple to use. For the extra capacity and battery life at a lower price, this is a perfect alternative to the nano.