Akarus

Terrible – Having reviewed this camera soon after first using it, I have since discovered a further, significant problem that was not immediately obvious. The mounting fitting, which is…

designed to allow rotation of the camera to get different angles, is also the tightening mechanism to hold the camera in place.

Once tightened sufficiently to stop the camera from moving within the bracket, there is no way to then loosen it without applying more force to the mounting clip than it is designed to take as there is no other way to grip it strongly enough without using pliers that damage the plastic. Sooner or later, if you have to change the camera angle, the mounting clip will break, rendering the camera useless until a replacement mounting kit is purchased. While these are not difficult to order, it is an additional and unwanted expense.

Weakness in the attachment fitting.

OK – The DNE240s is good for what it is: just above an entry level CD player. Other than mp3 CD playback capacity, it's really pretty featureless. While this means you can get a CD…

player pretty cheap, it's not what you might expect from a Sony.

Since Sony was more or less coming up with all the new innovations in personal entertainment a few years ago, it's somewhat disappointing to see that this, the top of their range, is actually a long way behind what we used to see, barely higher than their basic models. Gone are simple features like backlit displays. There's no remote, nor capacity to connect one when every model used to either come with one or have it as an optional extra. While using AA batteries makes it simpler for travelling, it's also much bulkier -no more players about as thick as a CD case.

However, the mp3 CD playback is great, allowing the unit to be competative with the mp3 players that are now so incredibly cheap. The price is good for said mp3 playback, but at the cost of all the features.

So, a good unit but not really a Sony, nor nearly as good as it could be. Reasonably priced, good unit, nice to have mp3 playback. Not much in the way of features.

OK – A pretty good screen, which isn't too expensive. It's not a widescreen, but is fairly high resolution. The colour intensity can get a bit off when displaying high quality photos…

though, but is fine for pretty much everything else. Or at least the difference in the colour isn't noticeable. A good screen. Poor colour performance for photos.

Good – The Netac P100 is a reasonable media player, a bit above the entry level. The features are good, but there are a few problems with it. The built in camera is nice, as is the FM…

transmitter, saves having to plug in an extra unit. However, the transmitter is fairly low-power. Though it doesn't say as much in the instructions, a pair of earphones, or any piece of wire needs to be connected to the headphone jack, as this is also the aerial.

You can't make playlists of the music, but it does have good playback quality. Limited file types for movies, though it comes with simple software to convert to the ideal filetype for the unit. The main problem is that it has only 256MB memory space. SD cards can be used to expand this, but it works better off the internal memory. Reasonably good functionality. Good features. Small storage capacity.

Good – Overall, Sanity is probably the first place to go when you want to buy a CD or DVD, especially as they usually have a lot of products on sale. If you buy online, they'll deliver…

very quickly. But sometimes they just don't stock what you're looking for. DVDs that are fairly popular, but not box office hits, won't necessarily be included in their range. Also, while they stock a lot of old films and new films, a lot of titles more than about five years old aren't included in their range by default. Prompt delivery from their online store, with a good range of DVD and music titles. They don't stock a lot of the minor titles.