Mustek PVR-H140
Price: £191 Memory: 40GB
For the money, this Mustek offering is a top performer. The recording facility is simple and using a TV Scart lead we managed to transfer hours of programmes from a television and Sky satellite box. If we were looking for a player that children could operate easily, this would be it. The recording quality wasn’t quite up to the standard of the winning Archos, but despite being a little grainy, it was still watchable. Music and picture files were equally easy to transfer from a computer via USB cable, and it connected to either PC or Apple Mac machines with little fuss. And if you get bored with music and movies, the basic games will keep you amused, while there’s a memory card reader and a digital voice recorder, too. Our Recommended buy.