The VMP-008 is classed as a sports MP3 player. Fortunately, that doesn't mean it can only play sports-related MP3s like "Eye of the Tiger", or Olivia Newton-John's "Let's Get Physical" (God forbid). Of course, it refers to the device's compact nature, and the fact that it comes on a cord so it can be worn around the neck while pounding along on the treadmill at the gym.

To say this Veho MP3 player is compact is quite an understatement. It's tiny, measuring 4cm by 1.5cm, and it's only 7mm thick. The VMP-008 is also very light, so it hangs around your neck comfortably.

Aside from the main unit, a USB link is also included in the box, for transferring songs from your PC (obviously) and charging up the player. A set of headphones is provided, but they're plasticky and cheap-looking, with earphone cords that are a touch too short for our liking.

No software is supplied; the VMP-008 simply plugs into your USB port and thereafter files can be dragged and dropped across. It supports MP3, WMA and WAV formats for playback, although you can drag any file you want over and effectively use the device as a small flash backup drive.

As you can imagine, with a player this small there isn't the room (or the budget) for fancy trappings like a display. There are just two buttons on the front of the unit, and when pressed they skip forwards or backwards between tracks. When held down they adjust the volume, although it's quite awkward to tweak the volume slightly, as the buttons are over-sensitive and tricky to use as a result.

Navigating through your song collection on the 1GB of memory isn't particularly easy either, but the sparse feature set and fiddly controls aren't so damning when you factor in the price: £16 is very cheap for an MP3 player. However, the real test for any budget player is the sound quality it can muster.

Sadly, the VMP-008 falls down a bit here. The noise it makes is rather harsh and trebly when the volume is cranked up, and the overall bass response is poor indeed. Still, at middling volumes it's not so bad, and a lot of the fault lies with the sub-par supplied headphones. When we paired the player up with a quality headset, it produced a more favourable sound.

The sound quality isn't very good and the volume control's poorly designed, but considering the price the VMP-008 is still reasonable value for money, particularly if you already own a decent set of headphones you can pair it up with.