Sony's new NW-E107 is a 1gb flash based MP3 player, there is native MP3 support alongside WMA and WAV plus Sony's own Atrac3 compression format but the killer blows lie in the battery life and the fact that this miniature mp3 disc has a screen.

Sony really seem to have found their feet in the world of MP3 and our recent reviews of their network walkman range have shown where Sony provide direct support for the MP3 standard the devices usually beat the opposition. The NW-E107 therefore comes as no surprise to us, its tiny dimensions will make it very popular with both kids and fitness freaks, measuring just 56 x56 x19mm the disc shaped device slips easily into just about any pocket and can easily be concealed in the hand, its light too at 26 grams.

The screen while small does allow for track selection something which is a black art on the headless Ipod Shuffle, you can of course allow it to run in random play mode or just set it to work through all the files by album, but we really like some control over what's playing right now. The title of tracks are displayed as a single scrolling line with a smaller line of icons below, these indicate status like playback mode (shuffle, sequential etc) and that all important battery life.

Navigating using the scroll keys to the lower edges of the screen is a little fiddly but possible, its not the best user experience we've had in recent times but given the overall dimensions of the MP3 player the only other method would have been a small jog wheel. Battery life is nothing short of stunning with a claimed 70 hours (something we got fed up trying to test) from a single AAA battery, that beats the shuffle by some 58 hours!

A player pitched at the sub £100 market is clearly going to have to cut a few corners and while apple ditched the screen Sony seem to have kept all the user interaction but perhaps have let the build quality slip a bit. The unit we got our paws on at Cebit felt decidedly plasticky and almost toy like especially when compared to the likes of the iAudio U2.

Other niggle is the lack of support for drag and drop to fill up your NWE107, Sony instead give you Sonic stage, we promised not to kick this software again so we'll just say oh dear.

The Sony NW-E107 is a worthy addition to the flash mp3 player range and its funky styling and range or garish colours will appeal to many users (we liked the blue and red) it sounds good and is very pocketable and when its backed by the 1 year warranty then perhaps even the build quality worries are mitigated somewhat.

£99 for the 1gb Sony NW-E107 which has a screen and 70hr battery life, time for the Ipod to Shuffle a bit to the left and make way for the new boy.

Published - 28/03/2005

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