Immediately you are asked if you want EmoDio to scan your PC for compatible media to add to the portal. The time this takes to do depends on how large you music and video collection is. One coffee later and, for us, the computer was ready for business.

While the name of the EmoDio will only excite those whose band of choice is Fall Out Boy, despite the plain look of the portal, it's a neat rival to iTunes.

Clicking on the store, we were never prompted to sign up, but could access all the content we wanted. It was only when we went to purchase some music that the registration process began.

For podcast lovers, there was the option for EmoDio to automatically choose some content for you to listen to. When we tried it, the podcasts that started downloading was for CNN. Considering the portal isn't available in America, it was quite an odd choice.

Once you have gathered all your music into EmoDio – and when we say all, we pretty much mean all, with MP3, Flac, WMA and Ogg Vorbis all supported – you can start creating some playlists.

There's a choice of five pre-determined categories – Exercise, Study, Driving, Party and Meditation. Two playlists will automatically be created, and these are Favourite Tracks and Top 25 Tracks.

Clear sound

Playing music on the Q1 is a joy. For a start, audio sounds crisp and clear. There's no tininess that us sometimes associated with MP3 playback. This has something to do with the Q1 using Samsung's audio tech, called DNSe 3.0 (Digital Natural Sound engine). Instead of manually mucking around with audio setting, there's 13 pre-sets. If you do want to dabble in manually sorting out the sound, then you can do so through the player's equaliser.

If you're fed up with your downloaded albums, then there's an RDS FM radio on board. Using your earphones as an antenna, it's fairly straightforward to pre-program your favourite stations. Sound quality again is quibble-free.

One of the things that Samsung is most proud of with the Q1 is the player's video mode. Annoyingly you can only watch WMV and something called SVI MPEG4 files on the player – the latter being Samsung's proprietary format. This means that if you want to watch any other video file type, you need to bung it into EmoDio to get it decoded.

The inclusion of the WMV does mean that the player is compatible with the BBC's hugely successful iPlayer. Downloading content to the player from the iPlayer didn't prove to be any problem, and the 320 x 240 screen was surprisingly vibrant.

The Q1 is an impressive MP3 player that holds it own in a very competitive marketplace. We reviewed the 4GB version of the device, but the Q1 is available in 8GB and 16GB respectively. It's competitively priced too – at around £60 for the 4GB version and £100 for the 16GB. It may never knock the domineering iPod from its PMP perch, but those who chose not to follow the cult of Apple will find the Samsung Q1 a pleasant and viable alternative.