So when we tell you about the Cowan I Audio M3 we need you to give us until the end of this article before making your mind up. Cowan are a Korean company who's president Park Nam-kyu extols the virtue of a harmonised workforce and pride in their collective product and lets face it the vast majority of electrical goods come from this corner of the globe, even when the badge represents some western electrical magnate.

The I Audio M3 is a hard disk based MP3 player with a full 20 gigs of storage in a slim attractive metallic silver case, like a few other MP3 manufacturers they have decided to divorce the blue backlit screen which gives an excellent readout of the devices status and catalogue. Holding about 5000 tracks in either MP3, Ogg Vorbis of WMA the I Audio M3 is much slimmer (14.2mm) and lighter than its brand name Ipod rival and its easy to fill up with a speedy USB 2.0 connection.

Navigation is intuitive via the Cowon interface with full access to the explorer style listings allowing you to build playlists on the fly, playlists can also be pulled down from the Jet Audio package supplied with the Cowon to install on your host PC, while this is by no means the best PC software it does the trick.

Thrown into the mix is an FM tuner which is also available as a direct record source and its possible to use the I Audio M3 as a Dictaphone with a good quality voice recorder as standard. Battery life is always key in this market and the Cowon does not disappoint with 14 hours of playback with the back light disabled and it can be topped up to full in just 3 hours.

There are a host of extras which dare we say frighten us including equalizers, bass boosters and all the kinds of gimmicks you expect in a Vauxhall Nova 1.3SR, with all of these switched off we found it to produce a good quality audio playback even with the supplied headphones. Using the line out it drives a HiFi with excellent power and precision in fact its better in this respect that the Apple Ipod.

We like the fact that this 20gb model comes with a cool looking cradle unlike the stingy Ipod offering and in fact the kit has all you need to get up and running right out of the box. The Cowon IAudio M3 really wins friends from that 6 line blue interface there's something really cool about attaching it your lapel and driving the slim little unit while its still tucked in a pocket, of course LP found that this is also a neat way of doing without a car kit as the I Audio unit can sit in a door ;pocket of cubby hole while the display is attached to the dash with that high tech material.....Velcro.

The M3 is also a very large (20gb) USB storage device which you can move anything with even Mpeg4 movies!

So the key question would we buy one, yes because its got everything with a touch of style that even the Ipod can't match from quality audio output to useable extras and good battery life, but should you be the kind of gadget buyer who values brand then trot along down to your apple store and pay £20 more than the £249 price of the Cowon or alternately buy a sick on Ipod Logo?