Accessories for iPods are everywhere, but that's not the case for one of the best alternatives to Apple's nano range of music players, SanDisk's e200 series. Now three accessories have become available from Macally. All are styled in black to match the e200 series of players. How good are they?

The SN-A111 Portable Stereo Speaker is powered by a single AA battery which should give you around 8 hours of performance. It isn't exactly the neatest piece of kit we've ever seen: it looks a bit chunky next to the neat and tidy Sansa. You will probably feel you want to provide your own carrying case to protect the twin speakers, one on each of its ends.

Plug the battery in and you are ready to go. The speaker slots into the headphones jack on top of the Sansa e200 series. Its only on-board control is an on/off switch. This only turns the speakers off, of course, and not your Sansa, so there is always a danger that you could leave the Sansa on loop and drain its battery accidentally.

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Sound quality was not wonderful. Rack the Sansa's volume up to the maximum and there is definite distortion when music is playing. The speaker fares better when reproducing spoken words, which means it is at its best when used to listen to podcasts.

Moving on, the SN-E111 Stereo speaker is powered by three AA batteries - an odd number, as a pack of four will leave you with a spare. Macally suggests you'll get up to 12 hours of music from them.

The speakers form a circle and your Sansa e200 fits into a bay between them. The Sansa e200 series player clips quite neatly into place and is held securely. The speakers are free-standing and the whole arrangement has quite a tidy look. The speakers are a little large to carry around though; they have a diameter of a shade over 11cm. They weigh 92g and to this you need to add the Sansa's weight. They don't come with a carrying case. The speakers have an on/off switch but again you need to switch the Sansa off independently.

Sound quality is a little better than from the smaller SN-A111 and we felt it would be acceptable to many people, but it is by no means going to please everybody. The main drawback of this speaker arrangement is that without an option for mains power you are reliant on carrying enough batteries around to meet your needs.

Coming to the final product, the SN-MTUNE Wireless headset allows you to listen to your Sansa e200 series player without the trailing wires that can be so irritating. It is quite large to carry around, for example to pack away for a holiday, though it has been designed to fold in on itself to make it as easy as possible to pack and carry without damaging the headset.

Your Sansa drops into the left ear section and is connected to the headphones by a 3.5mm jack on a retracting cable. The Sansa's front faces outwards and you can raise your left hand to it and use its controls. While for precision stuff like choosing tunes you will need to take the headphones off, you don't need to disengage the Sansa.

The earphones draw power from the Sansa itself, inevitably reducing its own battery life but avoiding the need to buy batteries and helping to keep the headset's weight down to its 180g.

Sound quality is not up to the standard you'd expect to get from some other headphones you could buy for the same money, but it is not too bad.

We aren't sure we'd want to wear these headphones in the street, as they aren't the coolest to look at and more importantly they do rather advertise your music player to would-be thieves. They are probably best suited to the home. In the end what you are paying for here is the loss of the trailing wires that headphones usually entail.

Accessories for portable music players can be somewhat hit and miss and a very important factor for many people is probably sound quality. None of the Macally accessories reviewed here offers superb sound quality, and if you can, you should try before you buy to make sure they meet your own standards.