Another Goodmans product, another incredibly long name. The GDVDR305DVBT (try saying that after a boozy lunch) looks much like any other budget DVD recorder on the outside, but delve deeper and you'll discover it's in possession of a rather neat selling point: the integrated tuner is digital rather than analogue.

While Goodmans isn't the first manufacturer to do this, the fact that it's managed to do so and keep the price at a mere £150 is incredible. But has the budget specialist cut too many corners in doing so?

Design, styling and build quality have never been among Goodmans' strong points and this product isn't about to change all that. It looks reasonably attractive from a distance, thanks to its clean, straight edges and lack of silly design flourishes, but up close it reeks of cheapness (which is kind of acceptable because,well, it is cheap).

The remote control has received a real thrashing with the ugly stick too, and is apparently made from the same kind of low quality plastic as Christmas cracker toys. In short: this recorder is not going to make you look cool in front of your friends.

The selection of features isn't much better, and apart from a weekly EPG, an integrated surround sound decoder and the Freeview digital tuner, Goodmans seems to have included the bare minimum.

There's only one tuner, a basic selection of editing and recording quality modes and no VideoPlus. The connectivity is similarly limited, with the only video output options being RGB, S-Video and composite video. There's no component video output,and no sign of an i.Link port for DV camcorder users.

Ease of use

One advantage to this feature deficiency is that it can make a product extremely simple to use. But in this case, it's not quite the picnic we'd hoped for. Things start off well enough, with an automatic TV tuner prompt popping up the first time you switch the machine on,and the options and setup menus are straightforward, but all the while you're hampered by the remote control's awful buttons, which often need to be pressed three or four times before anything happens.

Duff remote notwithstanding, using Freeview is as easy as you could wish for, and both the quick guide and full EPG allow you to zip around the 40-odd digital channels quickly. Another advantage of the EPG is that it can be used to set the recorder: a simple command on the programme entry does the trick, although you are limited to programmes scheduled for the next seven days.

The timer can also be set manually, although unlike many it doesn't allow you to repeat an event several times over a monthly period - you're limited to a week instead.

There are four recording modes to choose from, with the best offering just an hour per DVD R/ RW disc and the worst offering the standard six. The top quality setting is completely unchanged from the original broadcast, while the drop in quality to the second (which allows two hours of recording per disc) is almost undetectable; this is the one we'd use. The two lower quality settings are poor, and you won't be using them for recording programmes you want to keep.

Performance

Unfortunately, the picture quality provided by the Freeview tuner isn't particularly good and, even on the RGB setting, the image seems slightly soft and washed out,while small but noticeable pockets of digital noise dance around the edges of on-screen text and channel idents.