Sometimes we can get a bit overawed by a gadgets at Lordpercy.com and our friends at IRiver know just what buttons to press to cloud our logical judgement, for a start the latest MP3 player from the boys comes in a bronze metallic finish which is enough to stir interest on opening the box, plus the promise of a large solid state disk that will not skip no wonder its arrival drew a crowd.

The promise of no moving parts solid state 1Gb drive is sure to impress much like a ford fiesta with big wheels and down lighters, but like the ford is the iRiver powered by an 800cc lawnmower engine or does it deliver good performance to match its looks. For a start the iRiver IFP-599T is onto a winner in the power stakes, with its lack of things to spin round at high speed (hard disks) it positively sips power from the battery resulting in an amazing 28 hour battery life, this was one of the easiest tests we just left it playing overnight and it was still going the next day which will make it an instant hit with those who regularly discover a flat Ipod! plus you can charge the 599T from the USB connection plugged into your PC.

The 1 gigabyte of flash memory can be used to hold MP3, WMA and ASF files, getting them there is achieved via the USB 1.1 connection which could do with being a USB 2.0 connection as the iRiver is at the storage point where its not big enough to hold all your tracks but is big enough that refilling it everyday takes up time. Measuring 64x51x19.1mm and tipping the scales at 60 grams including the lithium ion battery it feels like a nice compact unit

The iRivers navigation is again excellent and pretty easy to pick up without the use of a manual, its easy enough to browse by artist or album and make playlists using the 4 line blue backlit display and it comes with iRiver's music manager 3.0 which sits on your PC managing what tracks are living on the device, although you don't have to use it as it will work with simple drag and drop.

Of course and MP3 player can't just play MP3's anymore it has to have a few tricks, the iRiver IFP-599T has one main party piece, direct encoding via its line in, in built FM tuner of microphone at rates from as low as 8kbps to 320kbps, there is also full ID3 tag support so that your tracks are properly managed and just to top it off there is the option of synchronised recordings where pauses in input create a new track. When using the Dictaphone style mode we had a play with the SAD function this Sound Activity Detector is a bit like VOR and saves power and space if no sound is detected while set to record it goes into a low power consumption mode until awakened by the next sound.

Of course there are some usual extras too, the drive can be used as a USB mass storage device using that 1Gb to hold anything you like and as mentioned earlier there is an FM tuner too in case you get fed up of the tracks you have on the disc, all in all a pretty complete package.

So the crunch question is it worth close to £400, well we love the 1Gb skip free memory, excellent for those who want to go jogging or down the gym, the metallic bronze styling and blue backlit display are very cool and its easy to drive too, but it just pains us to say at £400 the iRiver IFP-599T is one to buy with the heart because the head is says no.

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