Archos 605 WiFi

Sleek, light and beautifully designed, this successor to the Archos 604 WiFi ups the ante in several ways. The screen resolution and battery life have both been boosted and there's more storage on offer -- the 605 range goes all the way up to a mighty 160GB, although we tested the 30GB version. In other respects, however, Archos largely sticks to a winning formula.

The 4.3in display reproduces video with clarity and precision. The decent size and quality of the touch screen make film playback on the move a pleasure rather than the trial it often is on portable devices.

You can use the bundled headphones -- the audio quality with these is nothing to write home about -- but the Archos also has a speaker built into the front panel. This produced fairly good sound.

At 150g the device is a breeze to lug around, far undercutting competing models with comparable screen sizes. It also feels comfortable in the hand, while the buttons are laid out intuitively. You can connect wirelessly to the Internet, but a Web browser is one of several software plug-ins that will add to the cost.

The only real down side is the charging procedure -- no dedicated power cable is supplied, so you have to charge via USB. This is extremely slow and occasionally flaky, with the device sometimes refusing to power up at all. This was worrying.