The video iPod is a fantastic movie player, but its enjoyment is slightly hampered by the small screen size.

Love them as we do, we love our eyes more and long sessions looking at that screen just aren't fun. The iLuv tablet addresses that problem. It swallows up a whole iPod in a docking bay and then plays back its video content onto a much wider screen. The results are actually pretty effective.

The screen is a tablet-style active matrix TFT LCD screen that's seven inches wide corner to corner. The image quality is surprisingly good - not as clear as an iMac screen or TV screen, but still with a resolution on a par with a video iPod.

It's watchable enough, and will keep the kids happy on long car journeys. Parents will be happy too, as the i1055 comes with a car charger and twin earphone jacks to keep the little darlings quiet.

The power comes from an internal battery that needs to be recharged. There's no disposable battery option. You charge the unit and playback until the battery wanes or you plug in the charging cable. The i1055 automatically charges an iPod whenever one is docked.

The reverse side of the iLuv has a fully enclosed iPod Dock with a bay door that flips out. At the bottom is a Dock connector which links the video clips on your iPod to the screen on front of the i1055. Under the screen is a full-sized DVD bay, which is the second option for playing movies.

Watching video

To get the iPod signal working, you turn the TV Out option in the iPod's Video Settings. Then you just navigate to the video content on the iPod, press Play and it appears on the i1055's screen. A remote comes in the pack too, but like the buttons on the front of the i1055, this only controls DVD content and not content from the iPod.

So, you have to use your iPod controls to select and play its video - the i1055 only controls the iPod's volume. You can play the iPod's content to a TV too, using the S-video and audio cable ports and cables that come in the box.