Overview and features

The most amazing thing about Apple's latest iPod touch is its colour.

It's available in both black and white. No, we're not being glib - we mean it!

Apart from the colour change there's no difference here between the specs of the iPod touch 4th Generation from 2010, and this latest refresh. This is certainly not the iPod touch 5th Generation that you may be looking for...

When the iPhone got a bump in specs with the release of the iPhone 4S last October we expected the specs for the iPod touch to get a bump too, but so far they have remained... untouched.

So, it's still available in 8GB, 32GB and 64GB models, the camera still takes 960x720 sill photos and 720p video and has an Apple A4 processor inside. In fact, the only other change, apart from the colour, is that it now ships with the iOS 5 software pre-installed.

So what's it like in white? Well, we could wax lyrical about how its beautiful milky exterior makes it look like a stray ice crystal prized from Superman's Fortress of Solitude, or how it's so thin and light that it feels like you're holding a delicate slice of the Internet in your hand. But, well, unsurprisingly it's startlingly similar to what it was like to use in black.

Saying that it does look good in white, and we wouldn't be surprised if the new colour means there are more iPod touches languishing under Christmas trees this year than there would be otherwise.

The iPod touch range starts at £169 for the 8GB model, but we've found that's simply not enough storage to be practical, especially when you consider that some video-heavy apps from the App Store can weigh in at around 1GB each in size. The 32GB model that we're reviewing here costs £249 and there's also a 64GB iPod touch at £329.

If you haven't looked at an iPod touch in a while because you've got an iPhone then we recommend a trip to your local Apple Store try one out because at just 7.2mm in depth it feels noticeably thinner than an iPhone 4.

At 101 grams, compared to the iPhone 4S' 140 grams it's also noticeably lighter. The other big difference in appearance is its steel back. With its slight curve it fits better in your hand than the iPhone's flat, glass back, but has the downside that it's incredibly receptive to fingerprints, and scratches.

The only other difference in appearance compared with its more expensive sibling is that it lacks the iPhone's mute/lock switch and the screen. While it shares the Retna display of the iPhone 4 and 4S (960x640-pixel resolution at 326 pixels per inch) it doesn't use IPS (inter plane switching) which reduces the viewing angle slightly and makes it look slightly darker than the iPhone when you put them side by side.

On the front of the iPod touch you'll find the same VGA camera for FaceTime chats and there are two volume buttons on the side and a sleep/wake button at the top.

Performance

So, while Apple has chosen not to update the hardware of the iPod touch this time around, the release of iOS 5 means its not short of new features. Amongst the 200 that Apple claim, iOS 5 brings iMessage, Game Centre, Notification Centre and Wi-Fi syncing.

The most exciting of these new features for iPod touch owners is iMessage, which brings texting to the device for the first time. Provided you have a Wi-Fi connection you can send text messages, photos, videos to other people with iOS 5 devices, or you can use it to carry on a conversation you're having on, say, your iPhone with somebody else. The group chat feature is also impressive.

And then there's iCloud - sign in with your Apple ID and you get access to iTunes in the Cloud (the ability to get your music purchases downloaded to all your devices automatically), Photo Stream (every photo you take on your iPod touch will now be uploaded to the cloud and appear almost instantly on your your iCloud-connected devices) and Documents in the Cloud which keeps documents in iCloud-enabled apps up to date on all your devices.

Then there's also wireless backups and calendar, email and contacts syncing.

There's certainly no lack of features here. And let's not forget AirPlay either which, when combined with an Apple TV box, enables you to stream all your media from your iPod touch to watch on your HD TV or direct to AirPlay enabled speakers in your house. You can even use your iPod touch as a remote control for your Apple TV.

Of course, iOS 5 is a free upgrade for existing iPod touch owners too, rather than a feature of the very latest iPod touch, and it runs fantastically well on 4th generation iPod touch models. Apps feel snappy and we experienced no slow downs or software crashes.

Camera

The iPod touch's cameras are a bit like the proverbial buses – we waited years for one to appear, and now two have come along at once.

There's a VGA front-facing camera for FaceTime video chat, and a rear-facing one for taking snaps.

Both are welcome additions, even though the latter isn't anywhere near as good as the iPhone 4S's when it comes to taking still photos. At just 960x720 pixels (0.69 megapixels), there were compact cameras a decade ago that were capable of more.

Colour reproduction is slightly colder and less realistic than the iPhone 4, and the angle of view is narrower.

Furthermore, there's no HDR, and the lens is fixed-focus – tapping the screen merely alters the exposure. So while this could take a quick snap of your day out to share on Twitter or Facebook, its uses are limited as a stills camera.

Certainly when compared to the iPhone 4, it's chalk and cheese, and you can see a marked difference between the two photos below, taken from exactly the same position using an iPod touch and an iPhone 4.

iPhone 4 photo...See full-res image

iPod touch 4th Generation photo...See full-res image

Where the camera does hold its own, however, is video recording. It shoots 30 frames per second at a resolution of 1280x720 for 720p HD, and does a decent job.

While colours still aren't as rich as those in iPhone 4 footage, the angle of view was wider and panning was smoother. We'd go so far as to say that we preferred the iPod touch for the sort of straightforward, point-and-shoot video that it's most likely to get used for.

That said, it's still no match for a dedicated camcorder or even a Flip-style pocket device.

Once you've recorded your footage, you can edit and publish it by buying iMovie for £4.99 from the App Store.

FaceTime

Apple has run a major advertising campaign for FaceTime, its video chat service that works over Wi-Fi.

It uses the front-facing camera to film your face as you talk to a friend, while at the same time, beaming their face to your device. Until now, it had been exclusive to the iPhone 4, and you had to make a regular mobile call first.

Now, you can use FaceTime on your iPod touch, and it works a treat. You sign up with your Apple ID (the same one you use for the App Store and iTunes Store) and then anyone with an iPod touch or iPhone 4 can call you, simply using your FaceTime email address.

The only glitch we had with it was when we tried calling a friend whose device wasn't connected to a Wi-Fi network at the time. Instead of getting an error message at our end, we got the regular ringing sound, as though nothing was wrong. The recipient did, however, get a notification of a missed call when we hung up.

Video samples

We recorded three test videos with the new iPod touch. One outside the TechRadar office in the sunshine, one inside the office and one outside using the front-facing camera.

Subscribe to TechRadar's videos on YouTube

Media performance

As with all iOS devices, you have to connect the iPod touch up to iTunes before you can use it.

You'll be guided through the setup process, and offered the chance to restore a previous backup to it –so if you've already got an iPod touch or iPhone, transferring all your apps and settings across is a breeze.

If you'd rather not load all your apps onto the iPod, you can simply uncheck the ones you'd rather leave on your computer and resync. Since the iPod touch we tested came with iOS 4.1 installed, we didn't have to wait around while iTunes downloaded any updates – we simply transferred our music across and were ready to go in minutes.

Any apps you buy on the iPod touch are synced to your computer when you next connect it up, although if you manage your music manually, things you buy on the iPod aren't copied across automatically.

While it's easy enough to do this yourself (by right-clicking the iPod's name in iTunes and selecting Transfer Purchases), it would be nice if this was automated.

We mentioned the A4 processor earlier, and boy does it make the iPod touch fly. It boots from cold to the Home screen in 31 seconds, five seconds faster than the iPhone 4. But in reality, there's rarely any need to switch the device off completely – just put it to sleep and you can wake it in an instant as soon as you want to use it.

General performance is identical to the iPhone 4. Swiping between screens is smooth, pop-up alerts appear without jittering and folders sweep open majestically. The whole user interface just oozes class and polish and is a joy to use, as is the on-screen keyboard.

Formats

The included headphones, as we mentioned earlier, don't have a clicker in the wire, and are much as you'd expect from Apple – solid but unspectacular.

Frequency response is between 20Hz and 20,000Hz, with an impedance of 32 ohms. It's worth playing around with the various EQ presets to get a bit more oomph out of them, but you'll never get huge depth or powerful bass.

Sound also starts to get a bit tinny if you turn the volume up very high. Certainly they're better than the ones that came with very early iPods, but if you like your music, it's worth investing a little extra in some specialist earphones.

The iPod supports a range of audio formats, including 8-320Kbps AAC (and the protected variant that you get from the iTunes Store). You can also play HE-AAC, regular and VBR MP3, AIFF, Apple Lossless, WAVE and Audible (2, 3, 4, Enhanced Audio, AAX and AAX+).

But it won't play FLAC, OGG or WMA files without converting them on your computer first. If you try to copy an incompatible file to your iPod touch, iTunes will warn you it won't work and will refuse to copy it.

Video-wise, the iPod touch plays a range of formats including up to 720p H.264-encoded formats such as .mp4, .mov and .m4v. It also likes MPEG-4-encoded .mp4, .mov and .m4v, as well as Motion JPEG .avi files. Again, there are free tools for Mac and PC to convert these, such as Videora.

Apple also sells Dock to VGA, Dock to component AV and Dock to Composite AV cables to output video from the iPod touch.

Sound quality

We've never been massive fans of the sound quality on Apple's iPods. It's certainly not awful, but compared to, say, Creative's Zen X-Fi, the sound of the iPod is noticeably lacking. This was true of last year's iPod touch, and not much has changed with the new model.

This weakness becomes more apparent if you use the touch with some more accomplished headphones. We test using some super-duper earphones from Shure, and even with a 320kbps MP3 file (you'll find no snobby audiophiles in the TechRadar office!) the music quality can sound a tad muddy compared to the Zen or even some of Sony's Walkman devices.

If we were Apple, we'd sling Creative some pocket money and stick some of that X-Fi technology into the touch and the iPad. Unfortunately, it's more likely that we'll see Steve Jobs landing on the moon next year than such a partnership ever being announced.

Verdict

In the usual TR format, so recapping what you've already discussed. Should be an intro, then a 'we liked' section, then 'we disliked' and then a final verdict.

There's no doubt that the iPhone is where Apple's attention is right now, and perhaps rightly so, but the iPod changed the way we listen to music forever, and it's a little bit sad to see its star wane, eclipsed by the iPhone.

The latest iPod touch is under-specced compared to the iPhone 4S - we wish Apple had put Siri, the A5 chip or an upgraded camera into the iPod touch to bring it up to speed, rather than just bring out a new colour, but it's still a great product as it is, and the new iOS 5 features add so many more strings to its bow.

Let's not forget its strengths - as a portable media player it's still second to none. The iPod app is great - making it easy to find and play music on the device, and create great playlists.

It's also great as a little portable movie player for taking on journeys or killing time on the commute to work. And then there's the games angle - as a casual gaming device its second to none, mainly because of the thousands of low-priced or free 3rd party games available on the App Store.

And while the video camera is now looking a little long in the tooth it's still perfectly fine for shooting clips of friends and family to upload to YouTube.

You don't even need to get your PC or Mac involved - you can edit clips right on the device using the built in editing features or by taking things further with the iMovie app, and upload them to YouTube with a few taps. And thanks to iBooks it also works well as an eBook reader that fits in your pocket.

We liked

The white colour gives it a fresh new look. iOS 5 adds some great new features and iCloud connects it to all your other devices effortlessly. Integration with Apple TV is outstanding. It's lightweight, incredibly thin and (if it wasn't such an objectional term to apply to technology) we'd say it was 'sexier' than an iPhone. For playing music, browsing the Internet and casual gaming it's hard to beat.

We disliked

We'd have liked a hardware refresh now that the iPhone 4S has raised the bar. Having to sync through the bloated iTunes software remains a bugbear for some, and restricts what file formats it can play. While the 8GB model is more affordable it's just not enough storage for all the apps you'll want to download and your music collection.

Verdict

There was no way we had room in this review to mention everything the iPod touch does. We haven't even touched on features like Internet browsing, email, maps and the gazillions of apps that totally transform what it's capable of, for example.

We're really excited about a future 5th gen iPod touch, hopefully released at the same time as the iPhone 5 sometime in 2012, but for now the 4th gen is still well worth the money. In fact, it's such a versatile little device that it really does justify its high price tag, and it's not often you can say that with such certainty.

Overview

The Sony Reader PRS-T1 Wi-Fi is a light and thin ebook reader that doesn't quite measure up to the competition. If the only two specifications you care about are the weight (167 grams) or the thickness (9.5mm) then this might be your best option. However, if you care about an accessible interface, extra features beyond the basic book store, and a reasonable (slightly higher) price, the Kindle 4 is a better bet.

Available in red, black, or white, the Reader is a stylish and svelte ebook reader that felt comfortable during several long ebook reading sessions. You can borrow books from your local library, download free Google Books selections (including many Dickens classics), and play music files.

The direct competitor is the Amazon Kindle 4, which costs £89. That reader, at 170 grams, weighs about the same. Both devices have a similar 167ppi 16-level greyscale screen. The one slight difference is that the Kindle has about 2GB of space for books; the Reader has only 1.3GB.

The Sony Reader presents most UI options clearly – there are buttons to find your downloaded books, access the newspaper portal, and browse a Web site. The unfortunate downside to the E-Ink Pearl screen technology is that the Reader tends to flicker too much – about the same as the Kindle 4, but not nearly as much as the upcoming Kindle Touch (which has no UK release date confirmed yet).

While Amazon has done an excellent job of linking your book reading to your book buying, there is a similar streamlined approach with the Reader, but it's a bit less useable. You can search for books easily and buy them on the device.

There's a logical flow for book ownership. For example, the Sony Reader for PC or Mac software runs as a desktop app where you can also buy and read books. (Sorry, Linux users are out of luck.) There's an Android app, and a reader app for Sony tablets. There's no iPhone or iPad app for Sony books, and for the desktop you have to use the app since there is no Web version.

The Reader has a few interesting UI features. One is that you can hold down on any word to see a dictionary look-up, and the device supports 12 languages. As a touch reader, you can also swipe to the left or right to turn pages, and pinch to zoom in on a Web page or newspaper article.

Sony offers about 2 million books in their ebook store, and we found most best-sellers. Some titles, like the recent Steve Jobs bio, were the same price in the Sony store as the Kindle store. However, some ebooks, like Inheritance by Christopher Paolini, were conspicuously missing from the Sony store.

The Sony Reader is exceptionally light, and the basic book reading options are powerful enough. The extra features were a bit wonky, and the screen flicker became a serious problem during our testing. For £129, the Sony Reader PRS-T1 is a good buy if you prefer a light and thin dedicated ebook reader. That's still £40 more than the Kindle 4, so the Reader has some stiff competition in the ebook market.

In the box, Sony provides a USB cable and a stylus pen

Performance

Sony does not specifically state which processor is used in the Reader, but our guess is that it's a low-power 800Mhz processor that is designed more for flipping through pages of text than graphics. There's a weird pause when you flip to a new page in the browser (even on a 12Mbps connection), and you'll notice quite a bit of screen flicker even for simple tastes like logging into the Sony ebook store.

Modern ebooks like the Sony Reader offer features well beyond ebook reading. The Reader lets you load up music on its paltry 1.3GB of internal storage. (You can add an microSD card up to 32GB.) You can download magazines and newspapers, browse the Web, and even check out ePub books from your local library. The unfortunate reality is that most of these features do not work nearly as smoothly as they do on a tablet, and the screen is not suited for anything but books.

The Reader provides only 16 levels of grey at 600 x 800 pixels. The screen measures six inches, and the device fits comfortably in one hand. It's so extremely light that it feels more like holding a smartphone than an ebook reader. A dull black shell and a light grey screen fade into the background as you read – the non-descript styling is a selling point for those who want to get lost in Crichton-land.

There are five buttons below the screen for forward and back, home, return, and menu. Icons along the top of the screen show any current downloads on the left, wireless signal strength (the Reader connects over Wi-Fi only, not 3G) and the battery level or whether you are charging. The Reader lasts for about one month on a charge, but that stat erodes quickly if you play music while you read.

Oddly, Sony includes a stylus pen you can use for more accurate typing, and there's a large clip you can use to attach the pen…to something, but not the Reader itself.

Like every other recent ebook reader, the Sony Reader uses E-Ink Pearl second-gen screen technology, aka the one distinguishing characteristic for readers like the Amazon Kindle 4 and the Barnes & Noble Nook compared to modern tablets like the Apple iPad 2. You buy an ereader if you only want to read books; you buy a tablet if you want to read books and do just about anything else.

Verdict

The two stand-out specs on the Sony Reader are the light weight and the thin design. As a sleek ebook reader, the Reader stands its own against the Kindle 4 just fine. However, many of the extra features for borrowing books from the library, loading Google Books, and browsing the Web are hard to use. They pale in comparison with the quick touch access of any Android tablet.

Screen flicker became such a problem that we decided to avoid some features after testing them out. For example, at TechRadar.com, we wanted to check a review but the images tended to flicker.

We played music files in the background, but worried that we were chewing up battery power too fast. You can load pictures on the Reader, and we did, but the greyscale screen was not well suited to photos. As an image loaded, the screen would flicker in and out – hampering the overall experience.

The Sony Reader also supports music playback, but there are no external speakers, so you have to use a headphone or connect the device to external speakers. The processor should have been fast enough for basic Web browsing, reading books, and viewing photos but the screen tech caused too much flicker to make those features seem like they were working fast and made them less useable.

We liked

Entry-level ebook readers like the Sony Reader provide one basic function: reading books. As such, this light and thin model is well suited to book lovers. The Reader is just a hair lighter than the Amazon Kindle 4.

The Wi-Fi connection stayed consistent and worked properly. We had no trouble ordering and downloading books, and the Web sites we visited generaly appeared quickly (even if the photos flickered annoying). The headphone jack worked well for listening to music.

There's a microSD slot you can use for adding microSD cards up to 32GB each. The Reader lets you load PDF files, music, and photos but won't play video files. The device lasts for a month on one charge; buttons below the screen were easy to use. The device feels durable and looks stylish.

We disliked

The E-Ink Pearl technology is superb for reading books and long battery life, but on the Sony Reader the screen flickered more than we would like. When there are options like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9, with a tremendously clear and bright color screen, the Reader's flicker becomes even more of a negative.

The UI for the Reader is clear enough, but the extra features are hampered by screen flicker. Sure, you can call up a Web site easily on the browser, or check out books from a local library, but when the screen flicks to black after every click, you start to prefer an Android tablet quickly.

At times, the Sony Reader did not appear to be registering some finger presses; in reality, typing worked fine and was accurate, but there are no haptics to give a sensation of touch, and we at least felt the screen input felt imprecise even as we learned to trust that the touches were registering.

To read books on your PC, you have to download and install a desktop app – there is no Web app. The long-lasting battery life is great, but the charge does not last as long if you play music files. There is no 3G connection for impulse purchases when you are not near a Wi-Fi hotspot.

Verdict

The Sony Reader PRS-T1 is about the same weight as the much cheaper Amazon Kindle. We found that, for basic book reading, the Reader is a good option because the only time you'll notice any screen flicker is when you access the extra features such as the web browser

Pricing of ebooks matches what you will find in the Kindle store.

But if you venture away from basic reading, the Amazon Kindle is a better choice - it is just as light, cheaper, and offers a wider selection of books. Also, the Kindle offers more storage space for books - about 2GB compared to the Reader's 1.3GB.

Overview

If it's vaguely tablet-shaped, there's a good chance that Elonex makes it: the firm makes 10-inch and 7-inch Android tablets with capacitive touchscreens, cut-price seven-inchers with resistive screens, portable media players, photo frames, weather stations and ebook readers.

In ebooks it makes two kinds of devices: e-ink readers such as the £99 621EB, and LCD ones such as the 705EB. It's the LCD one we're interested in here.

As with previous Elonex devices, you'll be able to pick up the 705EB in Waterstones, and the RRP is £129 - slightly pricey in ebook terms, at £40 more than the View Quest Bookbox and even £20 more than the Kobo eReader Touch, but cheap for a tablet. And to be honest, it's more of a tablet than it is an ebook reader.

The Elonex 705EB looks awfully like a seven-inch tablet, and that's essentially what it is: while Elonex is marketing the device as an ebook reader, it also doubles as an MP3 player, FM radio photo viewer and video player.

A reasonable 4GB of built-in storage is enough for thousands of books, although of course video will eat capacity fairly quickly and you might find the 16GB microSD card slot comes in handy for media.

Where the Elonex 705EB falls down is in its display, which delivers a resolution of 800 x 480. That's a comparatively low pixel density for a seven-inch device, which is unfortunate when reading text is the device's main purpose. It also means that it can't display the advertised 720p video in its full glory. For that, you'll need to connect the 705EB to your TV.

The matte screen means it's better in daylight than glossier models, but the display suffers from poor viewing angles. Taken together, these issues mean it's best considered as a media player that just happens to do ebooks too.

The Elonex 705EB is roughly the same size as the Amazon Kindle 4, pictured here side by side.

Specifications and performance

When it comes to ebook readers, manufacturers tend to fall into two camps. Some start from scratch and ask: "What would make the best ereading experience?", building their devices accordingly; others build multi-purpose gadgets and then go: "Aha! Let's make it do ebooks too!"

There's nothing wrong with either approach, but if you're also building to a tight budget, the latter approach means there's a risk of cutting too many corners. We think that's what's happened here.

On paper, the Elonex 705EB looks just the ticket. A seven-inch tablet-style ereader with HD video support, 4GB of expandable storage, FM radio, support for DRMed ePub books and the ability to reflow PDF files for just £129 looks like a bargain, and it's nice to see devices in more colours than just black or white.

However, stretching an 800 x 480 pixel display over seven diagonal inches means that you end up with a pixel density that's lower than a smartphone, ereader or tablet. Images have noticeable banding and text is noticeably pixelated. We suspect that the lack of small fonts for reading is because they'd give you a headache, and even at larger sizes, the on-screen type is indistinct.

Viewing angles are poor, too – tilt the Elonex 705EB away from you even slightly and items start to disappear.

There are other concerns, too. Where other manufacturers tend to choose either a touchscreen or physical, clickable buttons for navigation, Elonex has gone for flat buttons around the bezel that don't provide any resistance or feedback. Instead, a vibration mechanism rumbles when you press a key.

You can see what it was trying to do, but it doesn't quite work. Luckily, you can turn the vibration off. It'd be nice if the device's user interface had been given a bit of TLC too: it looks like it was put together in Microsoft Paint.

It's not all bad, though. While the screen isn't HD, it can output 720p HD video (AVI, FLV, MKV, MPG, MPEG and VOB) to your TV. The MP3 player supports WAV and MP3 and has an internal speaker for when you don't fancy headphones, the photo viewer can handle JPG, PNG, BMP and GIF images, and the ebook reader supports EPUB, TXT, HTML and PDF.

In the latter case, text-based PDFs reflow to fit the current zoom level, which is handy for PDF ebooks from the likes of Smashwords, although the feature doesn't work with more graphical PDFs such as magazine pages. DRM is handled by the familiar Adobe Digital Editions, although you can simply drag and drop non-DRMed files from your PC or Mac in USB mass storage mode, and there's a text-to-speech mode for TXT files.

Claimed battery life is a reasonable eight hours for reading and 30 hours for music. While Elonex doesn't have a book store as such, it does provide Freebooks, a collection of 1.5 million free ebooks. Don't expect to find the latest Ian Rankin or Lee Child in the catalogue, though, the catalogue is the usual freebie collection of classics and obscurities.

As you've probably guessed, we're not keen on the Elonex 705EB as a dedicated ebook reader: even short reads weren't particularly pleasant.

However, the combination of an anti-glare screen, decent video performance and microSD card support means it's a decent alternative to a portable DVD player for travelling. We can imagine using one to keep a child amused on a long car, boat, train or plane journey - although older children will probably ask why you didn't just buy them an iPod touch.

Verdict

It's a shame that the Elonex 705EB is marketed as an ebook reader, because ebook reading isn't its strong point: it's a capable video player that doubles as an MP3 player and lets you read the odd ebook.

We wouldn't use it for protracted reading sessions, but it may be worth considering as an alternative to a portable DVD player.

We liked

The Elonex 705EB works quite well as a media player, outputting 720p video to your TV and doing a decent job of music, radio and movies. It's reasonably cheap and well suited to bright, colourful images.

We disliked

LCD screens aren't great for ebooks at the best of times, and the Elonex 705EB's screen resolution doesn't really suit the seven-inch form factor. The interface isn't very nice, the fonts are indistinct and the flat buttons are horrible.

Verdict

If you think of the Elonex 705EB as a media player, it's a decent device: the screen is at its best with brightly coloured photos and video, there's a TV out and 4GB of expandable storage isn't bad.

However, as an ebook reader it's less successful. We didn't enjoy the ereading experience on it at all.

Overview

For a while it was looking as if Amazon had the UK ebook market to itself: while rival booksellers offered a range of ebook readers from the likes of Elonex and Sony, nobody offered the soup-to-nuts service of Amazon's Kindle, store and associated apps. Now, though, Amazon UK has a serious rival in the form of WHSmith and its new Canadian friend, Kobo.

Kobo isn't new to the ebook game - it's been doing decent business in the US for a few years now, and its UK ebook store has been open since February 2010 - but its ereaders are new to Britain. There are two models, starting at £89.99 for the Kobo Wireless eReader and rising to £109.99 for the newer touchscreen Kobo eReader Touch.

Given the choice, we'd pay the extra 20 quid - the Kobo eReader Touch makes its sibling look rather old-fashioned, and while it isn't quite a Kindle killer, it comes very close indeed. If you don't like Amazon's power, can't wait for the Kindle Touch to be offered over here or just think the redesigned Kindle mings, the Kobo eReader Touch is a genuine alternative to Amazon's offering.

It's an alternative that in some respects beats Amazon's device at its own game. It looks better, has a nicer user interface and has a better range of typefaces, and unlike Amazon's touch-screen device you can actually buy one in British shops.

Ebook readers aren't just about technology, of course - they're about content too, because nobody's going to shell out for an ebook reader they can't get any books for. Kobo's got that covered, too: while we found a few gaps in the catalogue, the big hitters were present, correct and no more expensive than Amazon.

Specifications and performance

The Kobo eReader Touch has a lot in common with the latest generation of Amazon Kindles. Like the Kindle Touch, the Kobo eReader Touch is built around a six-inch e-ink Pearl display offering month-long battery life. Like the Kindle Touch, there's a touchscreen instead of a physical keyboard and page forward/back buttons. And again like the Kindle Touch, its bezel is just thin enough to make it awkward to hold one-handed.

There are other similarities. Both the Kindle Touch and the Kobo eReader Touch have screens that don't fully refresh with each page turn. That speeds up the time between pages, but it can make the screen look grubby between full refreshes.

If that annoys you, the Kobo's settings enable you to increase the frequency of full page refreshes. The default is every sixth page turn, but you can make it happen with every page if you wish.

There are some important differences, however. The Kobo eReader Touch's 2GB of storage - of which around 1GB can be used for storing media - can be expanded via its microSD card slot, its user interface is much prettier than Amazon's rather functional effort, and you've got more control over the way text appears on the screen. There are seven fonts and 17 font sizes to choose from, although at smaller sizes some of the fonts are a little bit thin-looking to our eyes.

On the plus side, you can switch off text justification to keep the right margins ragged - something that makes reading less of a strain. You can also view PDFs without having to convert them first, although the zooming and panning you need to do inside PDFs may annoy some, and there's a fun sketchbook for scribbling and saving quick notes or drawings.

The Kobo eReader Touch looks and feels more expensive than it is, with a choice of black and white models boasting quilted backs in black, lilac, blue and silver.

The interface is much prettier than Amazon's more functional effort, and the screen in sleep mode displays the cover of the book you're currently reading, which is a nice touch. You can turn this off if you'd rather not broadcast your reading choices to all and sundry.

Where some ereaders are tied to single stores, the Kobo eReader Touch is more promiscuous. It supports ePub books, including Adobe DRMed ones, as well as TXT, HTML, RTF, MOBI, PDF and the comic book formats CBZ and CBR. That means you should be able to acquire books from most non-Amazon retailers (Amazon books are in its own proprietary format).

There's also a collection of apps for iOS, Android, BlackBerry and Palm that enable you to sync titles and bookmarks between devices, and the Android and iOS apps support Reading Life, Kobo's awards scheme for readers. Reading Life comes in two forms: a set of statistics so you can see how much time you've spent reading, how much of your library you've still got to read and so on, and a set of Xbox Live-style awards for completing tasks such as finishing your first book.

It's all very impressive, but of course with ereaders content really is king. Does Kobo have the books you want? The answer is largely yes: when we searched for current bestsellers - the new Ian Rankin, Chris Brookmyre and Mark Billingham thrillers, the Steve Jobs biography and so on - the Kobo store had them at the same prices as Amazon's Kindle store.

If your tastes are less mainstream, however, it's worth checking whether Kobo has your favourites: for example, books by US humourist PJ O'Rourke weren't available in the UK store, and some of our searches for less well-known fiction writers were unsuccessful.

Verdict

The Kobo eReader Touch looks and feels more expensive than it is, and to our eyes it's cooler than the new Amazon Kindles. The online catalogue isn't quite as big as Amazon's, but it's still big. For mainstream fiction and non-fiction reading, the Kobo is well worth a look.

We liked

The Kobo eReader Touch is impressive on multiple fronts: it looks good, it's easy to get the display just-so and there are Kobo editions of pretty much any book you'd expect to find in WHSmith.

We disliked

Maybe we're just fat fingered, but we found the bezel too thin for comfortable one-handed operation. Some of the display fonts are rather insubstantial, and the lack of 3G may be a deal-breaker for some.

Final verdict

The Kobo eReader Touch is an interesting and desirable alternative to the Kindle Touch - and unlike Amazon's touchscreen ereader, you can buy one in Britain. It's much more desirable than the entry-level Kindle, and if you're considering an ereader it should definitely be on your shortlist.

Overview

We're seeing an ideological battle happening in ebook land. On one hand you have the e-ink advocates, who argue that anything but e-ink is hopeless for ebook reading, and that ebook readers should do one thing really, really well. On the other, you've got the LCD fans, who reckon that there's more to life than just books and that having a device that can only handle one kind of media is a bit silly.

View Quest is firmly in the second camp, so its Bookbox is a multimedia device as well as an ebook reader.

At first glance the View Quest Bookbox looks like an oversized smartphone: it's dominated by the screen, there's a bunch of buttons at the bottom and the whole thing slips happily into a reasonably roomy pocket. Its price is similar to an Amazon Kindle or a Kobo Wireless eReader, with an RRP of £79.99.

Above is how it physically compares to an Amazon Kindle.

However, it's much thicker than an ereader or smartphone - at 16mm it's a bit of a porker. And the shiny screen means that, unlike e-ink devices, the View Quest Bookbox isn't something you'd take to the beach - like all backlit LCDs, its screen is useless in direct sunlight.

That doesn't mean you should write the View Quest Bookbox off, however. We're in media player territory here, where devices are designed not for poolside reading but for the odd ebook at bedtime and watching blockbusters on the bus. That five-inch backlit LCD isn't ideal for protracted periods of reading, but it's crisp, clear and really rather good for video.

Factor in support for a surprisingly large range of file formats and the View Quest Bookbox starts to look much more interesting and attractive.

The View Quest Bookbox, then, is a kind of cross between Amazon's latest Kindle and Apple's latest iPod touch: more functional than the former and bigger and cheaper than the latter.

We wouldn't recommend it for bookworms, but that doesn't mean we wouldn't recommend it at all.

Specifications and performance

The View Quest Bookbox is powered by an ARM 9 processor running at 400MHz, and its 2,000mAH battery promises six hours of ebook reading or 20 hours of music. There's 2GB of onboard storage, and the integral MMC/SD/SDHC slot supports cards with up to 32GB capacity.

The five-inch screen delivers 800 x 600 resolution, which is adequate for a five-incher, and the user interface is pretty horrible to look at but simple enough to use.

You wouldn't expect a touchscreen at this price, and you don't get one. Don't expect Apple-style engineering either. The View Quest Bookbox is perfectly well screwed together but looks and feels plasticky, and we found that some button presses caused ripples on the screen. Maybe we're just incredibly strong - although we doubt it.

The View Quest Bookbox looks and feels like a slightly overgrown smartphone. The front is dominated by the screen with a handful of buttons - left, right, menu, zoom, return, play/pause and a d-pad - at the bottom, and the slightly curved, rubberised plastic back won't slip around on tables or in your hands.

There are forward and back buttons on the right-hand side of the case - sorry sinistrals, but there isn't a matching set on the left - and the familiar smartphone-style positioning of the power button at the top of the screen and headphone socket and micro USB port at the bottom. Unlike rival devices, there aren't any built-in speakers.

The screen itself is a clear, bright 800 x 480 display with fairly narrow viewing angles: if you don't hold it just-so, the image disappears.

As an ebook reader, the View Quest Bookbox is reasonably good. Its processor is hardly a screamer, but that doesn't matter when all you're doing is turning pages. Provided you hold the display at the right angle, text is reasonably clear - think typical smartphone screen - and it's easy to adjust text sizes, colours and brightness or to add or find a bookmark.

The View Quest Bookbox supports ePub, PDF, TXT, FB2, PDB and HTML files, and it supports Adobe DRM so you can buy the latest Terry Pratchett from Waterstones or WHSmith on your PC or Mac and transfer it to the View Quest Bookbox.

There's more to the View Quest Bookbox than books, though. It has a built-in MP3 player and photo viewer and its video player will happily handle DivX, AVI, MP4 and MKV files.

You won't fit many movies into the 2GB of onboard storage, but memory cards are cheap enough that that shouldn't be too big an issue.

We expected the View Quest Bookbox's fairly low-spec processor to choke on faster clips, but playback was seamless and the battery delivered three to four hours of viewing before running out of puff.

Viewing angles remained problematic, though: this isn't a device that several people can watch simultaneously.

We can't help thinking that the ideal users of the View Quest Bookbox are children. There's no Wi-Fi or 3G so there's no danger of them accessing any video or books you haven't approved, and at £79 the View Quest Bookbox isn't so expensive that you'll need to cover it in bubble wrap to protect it from jammy fingers.

Verdict

As a portable video player, the View Quest Bookbox isn't bad, but its screen isn't the best, the UI's pretty horrible and it looks embarrassingly old-fashioned next to an Amazon Kindle or iPod touch. It'd be a great way to keep a child quiet through an EasyJet flight, but we wouldn't buy one for ourselves.

We liked

The View Quest Bookbox is reasonably portable, fairly rugged and cheap enough that you won't care if the kids try to eat it or put it in the toaster. Video playback and support is superb, and the price tag is very low.

We disliked

We're not fans of LCD screens for ebook reading - viewing angles are poor - and the View Quest Bookbox isn't the prettiest or fastest ebook reader around.

Final verdict

The View Quest Bookbox is caught between a rock and a hard place. The rock is e-ink, which delivers a better reading experience than any LCD screen can offer, and the hard place is the iPod touch, whose retina display makes it a better ebook reader and whose apps do more than the View Quest Bookbox could possibly dream of.

Overview, features and performance

The very notion of TomTom turning to Jeremy Clarkson for in-car navigation is obviously a polarising decision.

This surprisingly compact package may represent perfect timing for the Christmas rush, but be warned: Clarkson isn't for everyone, even in controlled bursts.

If you've got any doubts at all about whether the TomTom Go Live Top Gear Edition is for you, or the person you're buying it for, then you should stay well clear.

Clarkson, like his views on pretty much everything, is a delicacy - you either love him or hate him; there's no wishy-washy middle ground.

Don't be too swayed by the team Top Gear livery, either - you only get Clarkson's voice to guide you down Britain and Ireland's road, there's no James May to send you to sleep at the wheel, and Hammond is also notably missing.

You do get the Stig as a selectable voice, but this turns out to be simply silence - a one-off joke that has somehow made it into the final machine.

Far more useful, and impressive, is the huge array of standard voices on the TomTom Go Live Top Gear Edition, which aren't quite so irksome.

The Go Live moniker is an indicator that this sat nav updates its database on the fly. This isn't only locations of static and mobile speed cameras, but also includes traffic jams and accidents, enabling you to recalculate your route and avoid trouble well in advance of you realising that your motorway of choice is doing impressions of a municipal car park.

This service does come at a fairly hefty cost of £47 a year, so it's one for anyone that's on the roads a lot for work. You do get the first year free at least, so you can see how much you use it first.

Clarkson actually does a pretty good job of telling you where to go, and isn't anywhere near as annoying as we could have guessed, on the TomTom Go Live TopGear Edition. There are some moments of genuine entertainment, such as: "Turn left on to the motorway. You can't miss it, it's the big lump of tarmac covered in caravans and traffic cones."

There are moment of surprise as well, when Clarkson directs your next cause of action, followed by "I'm bored to death of this journey", or "Your driving is making me car sick". The problem is, these are repeated often in even a small journey, and there simply isn't enough variety.

The saving grace is that TomTom knows rather a lot about satellite navigation. When it comes to the important task of getting from A to B in a timely fashion, there's plenty to love here. The predicted arrival time is unnervingly accurate, while the routes make sense and don't involve anything silly such as sending you the wrong way up one-way streets.

The interface has recently been updated, and navigating your way around the TomTom Go Live Top Gear Edition is a delightful experience.

Finger presses need to be firm, but this is easy to get used to, and it does mean you're not navigating to Land's End by accident. The Go Live features are great, and really give you time to work out where it's worth trying a different route to avoid a traffic jam.

Mounting is straightforward, and while thicker than a unit that can be detached from a cradle, it folds reasonably flat to slip in a pocket. The decision to use a standard USB cable for charging, along with an adapter for the car power socket works well, and means you don't need multiple cables when plugging it into your PC.

Verdict

The problem with the TomTom Top Gear Edition isn't actually Jeremy Clarkson's voice, because that can be swapped once you've heard all of his little witticisms, but rather what else you can get for nearly the same cash.

This edition only comes with England and Ireland maps, while spending an extra tenner nets you the whole of Europe if you pick up the TomTom Go Live 825 Europe. This does mean that you have to live without Jeremy Clarkson's charms, although this is a sacrifice only the most ardent Top Gear fanatic could realistically not make.

We liked:

While we wouldn't go as far as saying the core navigation is flawless, the TomTom Go Live Top Gear Edition does do a damn fine impression of it. Routes are intelligent, and are based on more than simply getting you to the nearest motorway or trunk road.

The interface is a delight to use and explore, with the display readable in a variety of lighting conditions. The screen is uncluttered, even when showing a lot of information, and the 3D view makes navigating the more complex junctions straightforward.

We disliked:

Repetition means the few funny lines from Clarkson become less funny pretty quickly. There's not enough variation either. We'd also have liked to have more than Clarkson and Stig's silence as voice options from the Top Gear team.

The Go Live subscription isn't cheap, and while you could argue that it's only really intended for people that drive for a living, it works so well that everyone can benefit from it.

Final verdict

The TomTom Go Live Top Gear Edition isn't the cheapest or the most extensive sat nav money can buy, nor is it the most hilarious, but it does make for a tempting package for the right kind of petrol head.

It's a wonderful device in every other sense, and a formidable navigator, but we can't help thinking that your money would be better spent on a more encompassing model.

And on that bombshell...

Overview

The Amazon Kindle 4 (aka Kindle 4th Gen, Kindle Touchless or just plain Kindle) was announced as a sidenote to the colour Kindle Fire and touch-enabled Kindle Touch. But in many ways it was the most significant of the three, because of its extraordinary price.

The UK remains the poor cousin to the US in the world of dedicated ebook readers. While many are on the market, to be a real success they need the vertical integration of being linked with a book seller, both for usability and the subsidy to the initial purchase price.

A stand-alone reader needs to make a profit for the manufacturer from the retail price alone, while a book seller device can make its money from the books and so can afford to be priced cheaply. And Amazon as the biggest book store can subsidise its ereaders the most.

As a result we really only have Amazon's Kindle, missing out on other book seller-tied devices such as the Nook and Kobo.

Worse, we currently only have one of the new generation of Kindles, the others being restricted to the US (presumably for supply reasons). And to add salt to the trans-Atlantic wound, our new Kindle costs £89 compared to $79 (around £50) in the States.

But we do at least have one of the next-gen Amazon Kindles, and it's still very, very cheap. So how does it stack up?

Well, unlike the Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire, the plain Kindle is basically a cut down and repackaged version of last year's Kindle 3 - now renamed the Kindle Keyboard - rather than one with new technologies and features added.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, because the Kindle Keyboard was the best ebook reader on the market in terms of screen, book choice and price.

If you put the price of the US version out of mind, £89 really is cheap as chips for an ebook reader, especially one as accomplished as this.

As well as opening up ereaders to a new market, when the reader is priced this low you're less worried about taking it into environments where you might think twice about using expensive electronics, such as the bathroom or the beach. While not exactly disposable, it's not £500-worth of iPad to wreck either.

Amazon famously sells more books in Kindle ebook format than in print these days, and this price point is only going to accelerate that trend.

Performance

The key to any ebook reader is the screen, and the new Kindle shares the same 600 x 800, 16 greys E-Ink display as the previous generation Kindle Keyboard, and it remains marvelous.

Its matt screen surface is perfectly legible in the sort of direct sunshine that usually reduces glossy-screened LCD devices to pure glare.

However, it's not backlit, so you'll need the bedside light on at night.

Amazon claims its new Kindle's screen refreshes 10% faster than the last generation, but we couldn't see any obvious improvement.What has changed is the visual way the page changes - no longer does the page flick to all black before redrawing; now only the areas that need to change flicker and redraw, which looks much more elegant.

A full-page refresh happens every few pages. The lack of a full refresh degrades the text quality very slightly over time between refreshes - you can download a software update to return to the old refresh system if you find it noticeable.

The screen is the same, but the packaging is very different. The new Kindle measures just 166mm by 114mm, making it the smallest of the family and some 24mm shorter and 9mm narrower than the Kindle Keyboard, itself a slight device.

Design-wise the single grey and rounded corners are replaced with a tri-tone set of greys with much sharper corners. The plastic on the back has a slightly coated feel to aid grip, but not as rubberised as the Keyboard.

The buttons are simplified. Obviously there's no QWERTY keyboard, and just four buttons flank the central four-way-plus-select rocker. The buttons are Back, Home, Menu and a key to call up the on-screen keyboard. Forward and back ìpaddlesî sit either side of the screen, and on the base a simple power button replaces the slider seen in previous generations.

The net effect is of a reader the size of a very slim paperback volume of poetry, which sits in the palm of one hand - if you have fairly large hands. The reduction in weight to just 170g means you can hold this all day. The page turn buttons are narrower, so you need to hold the new Amazon Kindle slightly differently, but we didn't find this a problem.

One change on the back is the addition of two small metal contact pads, presumably to power accessories such as a light.

Inside the Amazon Kindle, the memory has been reduced from 4GB to 2GB, half of which is available for ebooks. That's still a huge amount of space, especially now you can keep any ebooks you're not currently reading ìin the cloudî on Amazon's servers, and just restore them in seconds. Amazon reckons you can fit 1,400 books on the device, but we didn't buy quite 1,400 books to check this.

Also reduced is the battery capacity, but the device should still last a month on a single charge. No charger is included with the Amazon Kindle, just a USB cable. But because the Kindle uses a micro USB connector, you probably have half a dozen compatible chargers lying around already.

The Amazon Kindle is Wi-Fi only - if you want 3G internet connectivity you'll need to buy the £149 Kindle Keyboard, or wait for the Kindle Touch to make it to the UK. 3G is handy, but for most users we suspect Wi-Fi access will be perfectly sufficient. The Wi-Fi chip is one area that has had an upgrade, with access via 802.11n as well as a and g wireless internet.

To keep costs and size down, all of the audio features on the Kindle Keyboard have been removed, so there are no speakers or headphone jacks, there's no read aloud feature and there's no MP3 player.

Most other software features of the Amazon Kindle are the same as the other members of the family, but the lack of a hard keyboard means that only the most masochistic of users will use some of them, such as adding annotations.

Similarly, the experimental web browser is still there, but while slow screen refresh and 16-greys display made it unpleasant to use on the Keyboard, with URLs taking minutes to type it's virtually unusable here. You might take the time to laboriously set up a webmail account, we suppose.

The on-screen keyboard isn't great, the lack of buttons for Shift or to change to numeric input and the tiny pad making tapping out even usernames and passwords a real effort. Fortunately, aside from searching the Kindle Store, once the device is set up you won't have much need for it.

The Amazon Kindle comes with version 4.0 of its operating system - the Kindle Keyboard runs 3.3. There are few differences, but one that the lack of a physical keyboard enables is the ability to switch languages, which could be useful for multi-lingual readers. A new set of screen savers are added, which are slightly more contemporary in feel.

As with previous versions, you can send your own PDF and text documents to the Amazon Kindle via email or a direct USB connection. There's still no direct support for the ePub format, though, requiring another conversion stage. This is starting to look a little churlish on Amazon's part. Surely it should encourage users of ePub-based ereaders to convert?

A significant feature, not just of this device but of the whole Kindle service, is its ability to share ebooks between readers running on pretty much every technology there is - PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, Android, BlackBerry - you can read the same books, and it remembers where you got up to on another device. This means you always have your books with you, even when the Kindle itself is at home.

Verdict

With the new Kindle, Amazon has significantly raised the value for money bar for ereaders. Amazon offers the best selection of ebooks, and with its fourth generation devices it offers as good an ereader as you'll find anywhere.

Now it's added an entry-level price that will have stand-alone ereader manufacturers crying into their beers. And it's done so without significantly detracting from the experience. Indeed, in sheer size terms, the new Amazon Kindle is the best yet.

We liked

The Amazon Kindle is small and light, has access to the largest selection of ebooks, and has thoroughly road-tested software in its fourth iteration. It's screen is state of the art and a pleasure to read on, and of course it now costs just £89.

We disliked

The lack of a physical keyboard means some of the software features are pretty much unusable, and there's no 3G internet option.

The Americans get it £40 cheaper than British consumers.

Verdict

If you want a straightforward dedicated ereader, it's hard to see past the neat form factor, superb book choice, amazing screen and eye-catching price of the Amazon Kindle.

If you want more features, you might want to wait for the Kindle Touch or Kindle Fire, but for most people the decision is very simple - buy the Kindle.

We've all been there – you're away from a power supply but need to make or receive an important phone call and the battery dies. It seems like the more complex smartphones get, the shorter their battery life is. The iLuv iBA200 portable USB rechargeable battery kit attempts to help fix or avoid these situations.

By charging it up beforehand you can carry it around, and when your smartphone, digital camera, PDA, MP3 player or other device that charges via USB loses its battery, you can quickly attached it to the device for an extra boost. We got an extra four hours of talk time out of our dying iPhone.

It works well, being compatible with major smartphone brands and handsets including the Apple iPhone 4, BlackBerry Torch, HTC Sensation and Samsung Galaxy S2, MP3 players including the iPod touch, cameras and more. For getting out of sticky situations it really can be a life-saver. Annoyingly, it doesn't come with a mains adapter – so you have to charge it via a computer's USB port, which takes some time.

A simple LED indicator kept us informed of how much battery life was left – although when we first used it we didn't know how long three LEDs is, compared to four LEDs.

It's a simple countdown that will at least let you know that it holds some charge, and the more you use the iLuv iBA200 charger the better you'll get at knowing how much time you have left when there's only one LED lit up.

If you have an iPhone or an iPod then there is a good chance that you have a lot of pictures and movies stored on them. The MiLi Power Pico Projector enables you to show them off.

This connects to your iOS device and throws the images onto your wall, creating a 'screen' of up to 70 inches. The images look good, although movies in our test were less impressive than still photos.

The MiLi Power Pico Projector attaches to the Apple iPhone or iPod neatly and runs off the device's battery, but if you plug it into the mains you can charge your iPhone or iPod through the projector.

When opened up, the MiLi Power Pico Projector turns itself into a decent stand, which makes adjusting the projection easy.

If you don't have an iPod or iPhone then that doesn't matter, because there are inputs for all kinds of smartphones, MP3 players and other devices included. However, the functionality of the projector is a lot more limited on these, because it has been designed for Apple devices.

It also comes with some built-in speakers too, which sound pretty good considering their size – although it's no replacement for a home cinema system, and there are cheaper portable projectors out there.

If you have an iPhone and want to show off your photos and videos in a stylish manner, then you might find the MiLi Power Pico Projector to be right up your street. Others might want to steer clear though.

The Conran Audio iPod Dock is a stylish speaker set and is very versatile.

As well as a 30-pin dock that holds your iPhone or iPod in portrait or landscape orientation, there's a 3.5mm AUX-in and stereo RCA ports for other audio devices. A USB socket connects to your Mac to sync a docked iOS device, though a USB connection won't act as an audio-in.

Its Bluetooth feature is especially noteworthy, supporting the latest aptX codec for CD-quality streaming from compatible equipment, including Macs running OS X 10.6.5 or later, but not iOS devices.

In our tests, the dock performed admirably through Bluetooth, effortlessly pairing and suffering no distortion or signal break-up.

The Conran's style is minimalist in the extreme. There are no on-board controls other than a multifunction volume knob you also press to cycle through input sources. All other controls are slaved to the remote, which is neatly housed in a niche on the side of the unit when not in use.

Six pre-defined equaliser settings let you tailor the output to suit your music's genre. Unfortunately, the controls aren't very instinctive, with the track skip buttons atop rather than next to each other and the current equaliser setting indicated by unlabelled LEDs on the unit's front.

Audio is lively and detailed, with each instrument impressively clear. Treble and mid-range tones are reproduced effortlessly, giving your sounds a vitality that's sometimes absent in mid-priced systems.

Unfortunately the bass is a little flabby, and not very meaty at all. Its sound stage is a bit small too, with poorly realised stereo effects doing little to shape the audio.

To an extent this is unsurprising in a system of this size, but companies such as Altec Lansing have proved it's far from impossible to make stereo speakers sound much further apart.

This dock's not up there with true giants of iOS docks such as Arcam rCube or Bang & Olufsen BeoSound 8, but it's substantially cheaper and good value for money overall.