I made myself a promise before starting to write this review not to mention the best known, flash-based, multi-gigabyte portable music player in the world. You know the one I mean.

The Sansa e200 series comes in three capacities - the 2GB e250 costs £119, the 4GB e260 costs £149 and my review model, the 6GB e270, costs £185. You can augment the capacity of all the players with TransFlash cards (also known as microSD cards) and in doing so add a maximum of 1GB of additional storage. Cards slot into the right edge of the casing.

The players look quite familiar (no, I'm not going to mention any other players), with a 1.8-inch colour screen sitting atop a control panel. There are four large buttons and set within these is a wheel, which is clear white until you rotate it, at which point it lights up blue.

The wheel's centre circle is a large 'select' button. This little lot comprises the means of getting around the on-board menus, and you probably won't need the manual to get to grips with them. The menu system itself is nicely designed, making good use of the colour display and never forcing you to go many levels deep to find what you are looking for.

The player caters for music in MP3, WMA and secure WMA formats. You can synchronise music via Windows Media Player 10, or simply use the device as if it were a USB drive and copy music files across manually.

The player also shows pictures and movies. You need to use the supplied converter software to transport these to the player, the software coping with most popular movie and image formats. There is a voice recorder built into the device itself: the record button is on the left edge of the casing, a 'hold' button on the top.

Sound quality is pretty good, though I'm not a fan of the in-ear phones that are bundled, preferring my own higher quality headset. The 3.5mm jack means you can make your own choices here.

Slightly larger than another player I could mention (but won't), the Sansa e270 is 44mm x 89mm x 13mm in size. You get a rather nice black pouch to keep it in and a neck strap lanyard to dangle it from.

Battery life is slated at 20 hours of music playback, and I've managed several days of listening during train journeys without tipping the battery into the red. Four small screws on the back casing allow you to get at the battery, so you can replace it if that becomes necessary.

This is a very nice player indeed. Importantly it ticks the right boxes in having an intuitive control system, good menu structure and long battery life. The only thing missing is an FM radio, and irritatingly this is present in the US versions of the e200 series but not the UK models.