Samsung's latest miniature MP3 player offers standard music and photo capabilities. It's also PlaysForSure subscription compatible and includes an impressive 30 hours of battery life. But is it ready to dethrone Apple's nano?

The Samsung YP-Z5 offers good sound and excellent battery life. Unfortunately, it's controls are difficult to use and take some getting used to (unlike Apple's Click Wheel).

The latest MP3 player from SanDisk plays music and videos, and displays photos. Plus, it's expandable, works with music subscriptions, and includes an FM radio. Can your nano do that-

The SanDisk Sansa e260 offers good sound, long battery life, and a competitive price, giving the nano some true competition. From its scratch resistant body to its larger LCD, FM tuner, and voice recorder, the e260 ups the stakes and comes out a ...

Beneath the elegant exterior of Creative's Zen Vision portable video player lurks considerable audiovisual prowess; Jørgen Sundgot picks one up and is hard pressed to put it back down.

Stunning audio and video quality; roomy storage; extensive format support; video out

Narrow viewing angle; no onboard video recording; few content pipelines outside the US

. At 240 g, it easily slips into a jacket pocket, where its 30 GB hard drive will hold a considerable amount of audio and video until it's time to pull it out and enjoy its stunning, 3.7-inch glossy display with a razor-sharp resolution of 640 x 480 ...

Now with brand new photo viewing capabilities, Creative's Zen Sleek gets a makeover in the Zen Sleek Photo. Sindre Lia takes the updated version for a spin, and likes what he sees.

Great audio performance; user-friendly music library interaction; bright 262K colour screen

Mediocre battery life; boots slowly

, the Zen Sleek Photo's touch strip provides excellent tactile feedback. An Equalizer harboured by the System menu, provides one custom mode as well as eight preset modes, including Acoustic; Classical; Disco; Jazz; New Age; Pop; Rock and Vocal. The ...

Have we met before? Don't tell me - you're the NW-A3000 everyone's been talking about! Join Sindre Lia as he works his charm on one of the slickest looking audio players around.

Object of desire; very good sound quality with proper earphones; good battery life

Expensive; heavy; sub-par music library interaction; scratch-prone

When connected to a computer via its USB 2.0 cable, the Sony NW-A3000 acts like a mass storage device. For music files to be imported into the NW-A3000's music library, however, it's required to transfer them via the bundled 'Connect Player' software. ...

It may not look the part, but Sindre Lia finds a stellar performer in the JVC Alneo XA-HD500 portable audio player and its 6 GB of storage, complete with remote controlled charging cradle.

Excellent sound ; charging cradle with audio outputs and cable ; great battery life ; responsive interface

Dull design ; mediocre monochrome LCD display

Straight out of Star Trek, Sindre Lia reviews Sony's new NW-A1000 walkman audio player - you know, the one that looks like its entire front panel is one gigantic display.

Object of desire ; good sound quality with proper earphones ; crisp display

Mediocre out-of-box sound performance ; sub-par music library interaction ; scratch-prone

It's shiny, it's pink (well, ours is anyway) and keeps on ticking for longer than just about any other audio player on the face of the earth; Sindre Lia gets to grips with the Sony NW-E407.

Astonishing battery life ; stylish and useful OLED display

Forced AAC conversion ; lacks iTunes and PlaysForSure support

It may look a bit droll next to the iPod Video, but looks can be deceiving: Sindre Lia reviews the Creative Zen Sleek, fitted with 20 GB of storage, support for WMA DRM and an FM radio.

Great audio performance ; user-friendly music library interaction

Mediocre battery life ; near-useless FM radio

The minute Zen Micro from Creative receives an OLED screen and ups storage capacity to 8 GB as part of its Photo makeover; Sindre Lia investigates whether its beauty is skin deep.

Colourful OLED display ; slick and rapid user interface

Poor bass performance ; mediocre battery life ; overly sensitive touchpad