With the MP3 players of today seeming to have an endless list of features you do start to wonder if sound quality is being overlooked a little. After all what's the point of having an all singing all dancing MP3 player if it doesn't sound much better than your old cassette player? Enter the IOPS Z5 with a feature list alone that seems impossible to fit into such a tiny metal shell - you'd expect the manufacturer to have cut a few corners. Fortunately they haven't and what we have here is one of the most beautifully constructed sweetest sounding funkiest looking little players around. With a combined sound output of 40mW along with multi-codec support (MP3 WMA and OGG); it drives a punchy powerful yet crisp tone and let's just say you can hear the music without your earphones inserted into your ears - it's got an impressive volume range. Features wise we'd be here all day if we named all of this player's abilities (check out the 'Features' tab above). It's got all of the standards you'd expect from a high end MP3 player; FM radio (with decent reception - there's a change!) FM recorder Direct encoding Built in Clock and Stopwatch etc. However since this little powerhouse has a full 65000 colour OLED display it has a few extra strings in its bow. Not only can you listen to U2 and Madonna you can watch The Matrix and Spiderman! Yes ladies and gentleman this metal beauty also plays back MPEG4 WMV AVI and DiVx movie files (through conversion) on its sharp little colour screen. Some may consider such a feature to be a little gimmicky but playback is impressive and you never know when you might want to watch an episode of the Simpsons or that last instalment of 24. The 3D icon driven menu system makes navigation simple and efficient and the decent 12 hour battery life powered from the player's internal lithium polymer battery means you won't need to dock the player to your PC too often (it charges via USB = quick & easy). You've also got a colour choice to make we're stocking nightmare black big eyes blue and perky cheeks pink initially with further colours following on in a few weeks. One last thing the USB 2.0 connection is like lightning; we've never seen a 100MB file move so quickly (PC to player in less than 10 seconds) - outcha!
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