Review: Aigo F786 Video mp3 player

With a wealth of ultra-portable multimedia players hitting the shelves full of shiny colour displays and extra features, it's difficult to tell exactly what audience Aigo is trying to impress.

The company smudges an already blurred line with the F786, which it dubs a " video mp3 player". It sports a screen too small to take video seriously along with a range of extras we are not sure you will ever actually use.

Each of its multimedia tools, which include an mp3 player, FM radio, voice recorder, video player, photo and e-book reader are capable in their own right, but offer as many frustrating drawbacks as they do hidden conveniences.

To begin with, the controls used to navigate are very difficult to understand, and at times appearing totally random in relation to their effect on the player.

When music is playing, for example, you need to hit the Record button to move back to the music selection screen, and then again to get back to the main menu. It's also worth noting that music stops when you leave the mp3 player tool, an endlessly frustrating feature we've seen on a few multimedia players in recent times.

Still, the display is pretty attractive, albeit small. There's a speaker built in so you can wow friends with your tunes (provided there's little background noise) and a few nice touches such as the lyric file display option sit alongside the radio and e-book reader.

Even when you take these advantages into account, the capacity (it's available up to 2GB) ties your hands somewhat in terms of content, and all video must be run through the extremely fiddly video converting application included in the package.

The quality of video, along with the audio, is reasonably good, but certainly nothing to crow about and just goes to underline what seems like the central ethos of the player itself.

The F786 is a jumbled party-bag of a device, offering a little bit of everything without much that's genuinely useful. It's reasonable value for money, and might appeal to those who think they will use a lot of the features on offer, but most will find it too frustrating to navigate and, if you're even vaguely serious about your music, you won't get enough control over it to make it worth your while.

Also consider:
Sony A1200 portable audio player
The Sony A1200 is a good value, great-looking player for those serious about their music

Netac A200 portable media player
The Netac A200 is an excellent mp3 player in its own right, but the FM transmitter gives it an edge over just about every other Flash player in this price range

Samsung K5
A stylish music player with a built in slide-out speaker

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