MSI Mega Player 521

Apart from varying design and memory capacity, portable digital audio players are all much of a muchness. Physically, the MSI Mega Player 521 looks like many of its 'sporty' rivals. But, as well as having enough room to store around three hours of good quality MP3 or WMA music, this 256Mb player also comes with a built-in pedometer, calorie counter and stopwatch.

Each option works pretty well, totting up how many steps you've taken, how many calories you've burned based on your weight and stride length, and how fast you've run around the park. Having these keep-fit qualities will certainly appeal to gym bunnies, more so than the player's rubber shell, belt clip and armband.

Unfortunately, the supplied headphones do nothing for the sound quality and we'd recommend replacing these immediately.

The menu system is a bit fiddly to operate, as the small four-directional cursor stick controls everything. To play individual albums you first have to remove all other tracks from the playlist, which is a bit annoying. As this player can only hold around three or four albums at a time, though, it's not as bad as it could be. If you tire of your digital music, there's an FM radio to switch to.

All in all, it's a decent player, well suited to exercise fans. However, you can pick up an iPod mini for an extra £50. Granted, this doesn't come with a pedometer, stopwatch or support for WMA but it can hold around 15 times more music.

Contact:
MSI 020 8813 6688
msicomputer.co.uk

See also:

Creative Zen Micro

Finally, we're able to recommend a portable audio player to rival the iPod Mini  04 Feb 2005

Medion Mini Digital Jukebox

Can this iPod lookalike steal the market leader's thunder?  05 Jan 2005

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