Recently we reviewed Creative's MuVo flash MP3 player and praised its minute size and stripped-down simplicity, which we felt more than compensated for the lack of frills like an LCD display. It made us think about what you really do - and do not - actually need from a flash player, and in the end we agreed with Creative that the answer was "not a lot."

IRiver begs to differ, and presents its argument in the form of the iFP-180T. This is a mini-MP3 player which has retained much of the functionality offered by larger devices, despite its diminutive size. To our surprise, the 180T is almost as small as the MuVo, and nearly as light (52g including its single AA battery, to the MuVo's 39g). Looks-wise, it's everything the MuVo is not, which is to say it's very pretty indeed; in fact it positively reeks of Design.

Perhaps the most unusual thing about it is that it is triangular in cross section, like a Toblerone (or prism, if you prefer iRiver's terminology). The main body is made of fairly thin plastic but the end caps are chromed metal alloy, so it should hang together unless you sit on it, although that's always a possibility with something which can so easily be carried in any pocket. We did notice that the sliding cover in the bottom that holds the battery in place was actually plastic, and looked rather delicate, so dropping the 180T is probably best avoided.

We weren't too happy with the neck cord either. For a start, neck cords tend to provide the player with an opportunity to beat you about the face if you get above a walking pace, which is a drawback in a device perfect for exercise sound-tracking. The other problem here was the short section of cord that actually slips through the eyelet on the player. It looked and felt far too thin and snappable to inspire any real confidence, especially with a £170 toy dangling invitingly off it.

To get the 180T going, you need to plug it into your PC via the supplied USB cable and install the driver and file manager software that comes with it. This is the work of a moment, and reasonably clearly illustrated in the instruction booklet. Once you start the Music Manager application, you can move files to and from the player and delete unwanted files from it.

The four-line, backlit LCD on the player also lets you delete tracks, and a lot more besides. You work the menu system from a little button that you can thumb up and down and side to side and press down on to select a particular option. Basic operations like stop, play, skip and volume control can be done more or less without looking, with a bit of help from three further control buttons on the next facet of the triangular case.

If you want to do something more complicated you will need to stop and look, but apart from flicking through the preset EQs (all of which sounded fine, and covered a sane selection of bass versus middle/top boosts suitable for most styles of music), there's not that much you are likely to need to fiddle with.

You should get about two hours' worth of MP3 music into the player's 128MB memory, and the quoted 20 hour operating life on a single AA battery seemed to be fairly near the mark, although we didn't stopwatch the thing. Consumer reviewing is, after all, supposed to be fun.

The long-cable Sennheiser MX300 headphones are excellent, delivering rich, clean sound with convincing, punchy bass and a crisp, biting top end. There's plenty of volume on tap too, and no clipping, even right up at maximum.

High quality MP3/WMA/ASF playback is not all the 180T can do. It also incorporates an FM tuner and a tiny microphone, and can record from both. The FM auto-setup worked well when we tried it, but will depend on local signal strength. It will store up to 20 channels, and got us going in about 10 or 15 seconds, without any fuss. With a strong signal, audio quality was again excellent. Voice recording was less impressive, but it certainly works, and if you set the bit rate to 32Kbps, you should get about 9 hours, so a worthwhile amount.

There are various details we should mention in passing. The player has programmable sleep and stop power-down timers, so you can get it to sing you to sleep then turn itself off, or simply power down after an interval once you press stop. Both potentially useful, as is the stereo balance control, the user-definable EQ channel, the choice of track timers to display, and quite possibly, the ability to pick from 36 supported languages. The firmware is even upgradable, with updates available from the iRiver web site.

On balance, we have to say that iRiver pulls it off handsomely with the 180T. It looks very sharp - definitely not to be left on the table in the pub or it will soon be gone - it's amazingly small for what it is, reasonably straightforward to use, and capable of great sound quality with FM radio and voice recording icing the cake. Yes, there were one or two things we weren't completely happy with, but the iRiver transcends its faults.

Verdict
Though tiny and almost jewel-like, the iFP-180T is packed with features, most of which are useful, and some, like the FM radio and voice recorder, might be essential. The basics are relatively easy to master, and the sound quality is excellent. There are imperfections, but our guess is that most people will be happy to overlook them once they get their hands on this very classy player.

Company: iRiver

Contact: 0118 977 4735

Tags: universal serial bus digital audio player iriver fm broadcasting toblerone creative muvo liquid crystal display sound recording and reproduction