What we have here is far from the prehistoric or unwieldy, a 1gb solid state MP3 Player with oodles of style and class might be a fair description of the Monolith perhaps the only bit that seems to fit the name is the 1.5mm aluminium casing. We've read all the stuff from Estar Laboratories about this amazing casing and how you can fire an air rifle at it without it breaking, it all sounds pretty cool but who in their right mind is going to fire an air rifle at a new MP3 player?

Especially when you look at the brushed exterior of the Monolith and it's twin colour 16 grey shade OLED screen, the 96 x 64 pixel display shows all of the data you would expect plus it can also display images and animations downloaded to the device over the USB 1.1 link.

It sits nicely in the pocket and is comparable to a small flip phone measuring 78 x 39 x15mm and weighing just 65 grams it's ideal for travelling or taking to the gym.

The audio playback capabilities of the Monolith MP3 Player are as sound as its appearance, inside  is a quality Wolfson sigma delta DAC, when paired with a good quality set of headphones or connected to a HiFi system the Monolith delivers a smooth and power sound with a good deal of clarity. We tried a range of tracks encoded at both 128kbits and 192kbits and did not manage to uncover any flaws in the audio components, plus as a solid state disk the playback was skip free even as we machine gunned the case.

The Codec supports both MP3 and WMA encoded between 8Kbps and 256Kbps, but does not support DRM protected WMA files used by many legal online download sites. The battery is a lithium Ion rechargeable unit which can power the monolith for 19 hours before needing a top up, the charge takes approx 3hrs from flat making this MP3 player a much longer lasting device than the new Ipod Shuffle.

There is a fair smattering of extras inside your Monolith too, the FM tuner not only acts as secondary form of entertainment but can be encoded as MP3 files, the onboard encoding capability can also be used with the inbuilt microphone and analogue line input. There is a basic alarm clock feature and the clock can also be used to set-up timed recordings from the FM tuner although this may be a feature to far for us.

Monoliths 1gb of storage can also be used as generic USB mass storage with any Windows XP or 2000 PC without the requirement to load drivers, the device is also compatible with Apple Mac's.

The Monolith MP3 player certainly wins in terms of design and we can safely say there is nothing else quite like it available, the brushed aluminium finish and OLED screen make it one of the best looking devices on the market. Sonically it's good too, we'd have liked USB 2.0 and perhaps some ability to plug in more storage like an SD card slot but its rare we get everything we'd want in one device.

Retailing at around £160 the Monolith MP3 player comes at a significant premium over the 1gb Ipod Shuffle and many other 1gb solid state players, but in this instance you are playing for quality workmanship and style, it's something different and sadly that costs.

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