First off let mention the current price, at the time of writing this review the Archos Gmini XS200 is £179.99, that's the same price as the Zen Micro and Ipod Mini and yet the 4gb and 5gb devices are dwarfed by the sheer capacity of the 20gb XS200. There in lies the main challenge of the Gmini, it does not have an FM tuner, or voice recorder and is in fact quite basic, but its an MP3 player at heart.

So how does it perform? we tried a series of MP3 files recorded at differing bit rates and all sounded excellent with the Archos providing a neutral tone and plenty of bass on those more thumping tracks, the supplied ear buds are quite uncomfortable and we'd have to suggest an upgrade to something more pleasant.

While the supported format include WMA, MP3 and Wav there is the issue of DRM or digital rights management, the XS200 does not support DRM enabled WMA files like those used by almost all the legal online music stores, so don't expect to be able to play your Napster tunes on the Gmini.

The 76 x 59 x 19mm XS200 is a bit wider than the Ipod Mini but much shorter it fits tidily in a pocket and the 120 gram weight is a little more than your average mobile phone, styled in a two tone grey and chrome effect it certainly doesn't look cheap and feels reasonably well built. The front is dominated by the 128x128 pixels 2" LCD screen which can display up to 9 lines of text or the many Archos icons.

Connectivity is via USB 2.0 and the Archos Gmini XS200 will work with both PC and Mac, once you have got audio tracks on the device the Archos browser allows full control of indexing and play list formation, its quite rare to have this level of control from such an intuitive browser on the device and its a real plus point for the XS200.

Detailed information about each track can be seen by drilling down through the menu structure, artist, album, track name, format, bit rate, encoding date are all part of a rich level of metadata, all of this is accessed through the joystick which is pretty good as a controller although not an Apple click wheel. The minimalist GUI is a joy to use and the greyscale screen which seems to have more than a hint of green looks great and is easy to use, icons are representative of their function which is good considering you don't get a printed handbook.

In fact the Archos Gmini XS200 doesn't come with much at all, just headphones, ac adaptor and USB cable, so if you get stuck getting to the PDF manual which is already on the hard drive could be an issue, there is also a copy of windows media 9 for you to extract to your PC.

One strange issue we found was with the indexing of files pushed to the Gmini, it seems that you have to manually start the re indexing of your new files from the Arc library on the XS200, its not the end of the world but you do wonder why this has to be done. Battery life is about average for a 20gb device and a little more than the Ipod Mini at 10 hours before a recharge is needed using the Ac adaptor.

Overall the Archos Gmini XS200 is a real value for money option, the Archos brand ensures a quality device and it performs in every department with the exception of the headphones, it is a Spartan offering in terms of extras but most of us just want an MP3 player to play MP3's. Just when we were about to sight the lack or DRM support as a possible reason not to buy Archos have released a new firmware version allowing DRM protected WMA's to be player.

So for under £180 there is a small portable and intuitive MP3 player with 20gb of storage, unless you really need the extras of the Rio Carbon or Zen Micro or are a style slave and must have an Apple this is the intelligent choice and gets a big thumbs up from the Lordpercy.com team.

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