e.Digital MXP 100

WHAT'S HOT: The EDigital MXP 100 adds voice recording to its regular music playing, a nice double feature. Operating the voice recording feature involves just pushing a few buttons; and the player stamps the time and date when you're done recording. The MXP 100 has a huge storage capacity--it can accommodate up to a 1GB IBM Microdrive (our test player came with 340MB of storage space). It produces strong, crisp sound on all but the heaviest bass (where the music starts to break up and sound staticky), and it includes an equalizer for manually controlling the bass, along with five presets (jazz, rock, classical, pop, and flat) to match to the type of music you're playing. If you have a digital camera that uses a CompactFlash card, you can double up your use of the media with this player. And with the IBM Microdrive, the MXP 100 is a good buy: A 340MB IBM Microdrive and a PC Card adapter by themselves can run close to $200. In addition, you can navigate your music list via voice commands. This could be helpful if you have a lot of music on the player and don't want to scroll through it all. I found the voice command to be no quicker than using the scroll bar, but it is a neat (and unique) feature.

WHAT'S NOT: Almost everything about the player requires a look-up in its somewhat sparse documentation. The unit comes with a driver for storing the music, but the driver is so unintuitive that if you don't already know how to use music storage software, you'll never figure it out. The menus on the player itself are confusing, too, requiring you to go two or three levels deep to select or change a song. EDigital includes a cheat-sheet card that you can fold up and stick in the carrying case for easy reference, but why should you need a reference card?

WHAT ELSE: The carrying case accompanying the player has a small handle on its side that hooks onto a waistband when you work out or take it with you. The player is small and light, making it an easy companion, but it comes with ear-bud headphones that I found painful and hard to keep in my ears (the player can use any portable-player-size headphones). It supports PCs but not Macs.