The Samsung YP-T6 has a handy list of features, but consumers would be better off with the newer and very similar YP-T7. There are three models of the YP-T6 available: the 256MB T6V, the 512MB T6Y and the 1GB T6Z.

On the front of the T6 is perhaps its most attractive attribute, a five-way navigational joystick complete with a surrounding blue backlight. Used to control the volume, track and menu functions, the silver joystick is easy to access and use.

The screen is quite small, but adequately displays all the information you need, including track number, track time, battery life, title and artist and the time. The fading light meter is an interesting addition; once you press a button the light will come on and then fade to off after three seconds in order to preserve battery (the unit runs on a single AAA battery). It's not an essential feature, or one that would sway you towards buying the product, but it adds to the look and feel of the T6.

The unit is box-shaped, with the screen and the joystick on the front. The right of the T6 contains the headphones input and as usual the supplied earbuds are poor in quality--we'd recommend purchasing a new pair for optimum sound quality.

The YP-T6 has impressive sound quality. It has extensive equalisation settings to ensure a pleasant listening experience. The T6 contains five standard equalisation presets (Normal, Rock, Classic, Jazz, and Dynamic Bass Boost) as well as a fully customisable user mode. But the best sound feature of the T6 is the SRS 3D, TruBass and WOW effects. Even with the supplied sub-standard headphones, the sound was crisp and clear, with extensive bass options available. You can also adjust the level of these effects and change them to suit headphones, earphones, speakers or a car pack.

The YP-T6 comes with an FM radio tuner and recorder, line-in recording, along with an integrated mic for voice recording. We tested these functions and were pleasantly surprised at the quality of recordings, particularly recording from the FM radio, which were clear and concise. Radio and line-In recordings are saved as MP3 files (at a maximum of 128Kbps) and voice recordings with the inbuilt microphone are saved in the WAV format. When connected, the device shows up as an external drive on your PC, so it is a simple case of dropping and dragging files to and from the unit. When we tested the unit, it lasted about 18 hours on a single AAA battery.