AMP3 Ulysses 2GB review

This media player seems to offer extremely good value for money. For just £69, you get 2GB of internal memory, playback of digital audio and video files, an FM tuner, JPEG playback and a voice recorder.

The black and silver casing surrounding the 1.8in full colour screen makes it look more expensive than it actually is, and at 13mm deep, it's incredibly slim and compact. However, it does feel rather light - a good quality in a portable device you might think, but it doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

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The controls are very basic and make the unit fiddly to operate. There's no iPod-style dial and no joystick - the play, skip and menu buttons double up as navigation tools, which is counter intuitive and confusing when you first start using it. It's also a tad sluggish in operation, and needs patience.

Turn it on and the main menu is bright and colourful, and all of the functions are easy to find. During music playback, there's an attractive graphic equaliser display and track information scrolls across the centre.

Uploading audio files and photos is easy. Simply hook it up to your PC via USB, then drag and drop files into the relevant folder. However, to upload video files, you need to convert them into 'AMV' using the supplied software.

It's a slow process, as files are transferred only a little quicker than real time, so you'll need a great deal of patience. The software also failed to convert some DiVX movie trailers downloaded from the internet, but it had no trouble with some older DiVX files, MPEG1, XViD and WMV.

The unit plays MP3, WMA and WAV files, and there are a couple of unusual features on board for music playback. The first is a built-in speaker, which offers tinny sound, but comes in handy when there's no headphones to hand. Secondly, the Tempo setting speeds up or slows down songs, so you can make Barry White sound like Justin Timberlake.

The unit has a built-in rechargeable battery that can be charged with the supplied AC adapter, or via USB, and offers between eight and 10 hours of play.

Performance

Only a portion of the already-small 1.8in screen is used in video playback, which makes the picture look painfully tiny, but there's enough detail to at least get a sense of what's going on.

It's also quite jerky and pixellated, but in its favour, colours are bright and there are no lip sync problems. The JPEG viewer is also below par, with high-resolution images looking very dotty and jagged.

The Ulysses excels as a music player. MP3s encoded at 192kbps sound terrific, with great bass levels and lots of detail. Activate the DBB mode and it gets even better, as it makes songs sound more bassy, dynamic and spacious.

Sound quality from the FM radio tuner is excellent and it locks onto stations automatically with no fuss or interference. However, apart from the solid sound quality and the attractive price, there are few reasons to recommend the Ulysses