Product Reviews

It's been over ten years since Trevor Baylis unveiled his Freeplay wind-up radio, and now he's bringing the concept up to date with the Eco Media portable media player. The innovative wind-up technology had no problem powering a simple FM radio, but even with another decade of development, is it really advanced enough to cope with a backlit LCD screen and video playback?

The screen itself is a decent size, but the resolution is nowhere near as detailed as that of other modern players. Videos were watchable, but the quality wasn't as good as on the similarly priced iPod nano. The display is also swamped by the huge player; while today's gadgets

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aim to make the screen the main feature, here it takes up less than a third of the height of the front panel.

Sound quality was also disappointing. The low-grade earphones supplied don't do it any favours, and even when we tried it with better quality replacements the sound was lacking in clarity.

Another gripe is the user interface, which is hard to navigate and makes poor use of the seven buttons on the front of the case. At least the included SD card slot provides a way to add lots of cheap storage.

Despite these problems, the most important feature of the player works very well. The wind-up charger gave us enough power to play half an album after just a few minutes of handle-turning. It's nice to know you'll never be stuck with flat batteries, as you can easily top up yourself, and you'll never need to plug it in. That's a huge benefit, both to the user and to the environment.

Things have certainly come a long way since the Freeplay, and to be able to charge up a portable music and video player with a few minutes of easy winding is quite a technological accomplishment. It's just a shame that the player isn't. If Baylis can shrink the case and sort out a decent interface, it could really take off.