We live in the so-called mobile era. Everything tends to be mobile, from mobile phones to palmtops, from mini flash disks to small sized jukeboxes. It is only natural therefore, that music and video players also follow this path and the market has been flooded with all types of mp3 players.

TEAC, a leading Japanese manufacturer of consumer electronics products, could not be left behind. Our readers will remember the MP-200 and the MP-8000 MP3 players that we have already reviewed.

The MP-200 (left above) was a very small music player, and the MP-8000 (right) was a 3.5" Video/Music player. This time, TEAC has even more to offer. Imagine having a music player, a video player, a voice/sound recorder, a radio device and a flash disk, packed and ready to go in a size even smaller than the MP-200.

The newest all-in-one device, the MP-400, impressed us with its small size, light weight and features. It uses a USB2.0 port to connect to any PC, and comes in two versions. One with 512MB of storage capacity, and one with 1GB storage capacity. It supports MP3, WMA, OGG, JPEG and MP4 files, and uses a 65K, 0.96" LCD screen on which to display information about the file you are listening or to play an MP4 video file. You can also listen to the radio, record your favorite radio program in WMA format, or use it as a voice recorder.

Because it uses the well known WMA compression method to encode all the recorded files, with 512MB you can store quite a few hours of music, depending of course on the sound quality you choose to encode at.

- Features & Specifications

While the main features of the TEAC MP-400 have already been mentioned, the table below presents a more detailed list of specifications for this device.