Sony's recent offerings in the MP3 player market have established the technology giant as a real friend to the true audio fanatic. Rather than packing players full of additional features like digital video support, Sony instead focuses on getting the absolute most from your music.

In the NW-S706 it has avoided the urge to go all 'shortbread biscuit' on us like various iPod Nano clones, and has come up with something quite stunning in a whole different way. The NW-S706 is about the size of a disposable lighter, with a fade-to-black screen and a silver/chrome lining. Most distinctive, though, is the multi-functional swivel wheel mounted at the end, looking like something you might find on a futuristic submarine.

It's a fantastic design and feels solid and well built in the hand. The swivel wheel, the focus point of the controls on the player, has two operational modes; 'normal' and 'folder'. The former is a simple track search/skip control, but the folder mode allows you to instantly switch between songs according to a sort category you can set up from the main menu. This gives you an extra dimension in instant browsing and works extremely well.

There are other little touches, such as the album cover search that allows you to use uploaded cover art to browse albums by cover designs, plus the intelligent shuffle feature that automatically creates playlists based on your favourite (most played) tracks, songs from a particular era or recently transferred music. All of this makes it effortless to get the most from your tunes without having to create your own playlists, and comes together beautifully to give you total control over your music.

Audio quality is outstanding, due in no small part to the excellent ear-bud 'phones Sony supplies, which by themselves all but eliminate ambient noise and also enable a specific noise filter function to improve things even more. We can say without hesitation that these are the best headphones we've seen supplied as standard with any MP3 player, and coupled with a massive range of audio modes they deliver truly excellent sound.

Regarding the audio, Sony has obviously realised that most people won't use more than a couple of equalizer settings most of the time, and allows you to configure two different custom modes to your own equalizer preference, which are easily interchangeable during playback.

In addition to more typical equalizer presets you can also make sound more vibrant by selecting an environment from the VPT studio, or use a dynamic normalizer to control the volume level. You probably don't need to understand what all this does, but suffice to say you're given a wealth of options to create what is effectively the perfect audio experience.

You'll find an FM radio built in and Sony claims up to 50 hours of battery time - an outstanding degree of stamina - along with a quick charge function that offers three hours of playback from three minutes of charge, which is ideal for a quick fix.

The screen has a range of display modes and the clock display in particular just goes to underline the pure class of the NW-S706. It's a supremely useable and beautiful looking device, one of the few around that allows you to tut and smirk condescendingly toward anyone holding an iPod and be entirely justified in doing so.

Currently the 4GB model retails for £179.99 but we saw it priced lower online at the time of writing. If you can find it for a lower price it's a must-buy, plain and simple, but even at the full retail price, considering the battery life, excellent headphones, style and total audio control, we'd pick one up over any other MP3 player of this type seen to date.

Even if you're an old hand in the world of MP3 players, the NW-S706 will make you want to listen to your music all over again. In an oversaturated market this is a total solution for those who are serious about their tunes, combining everything you need in an MP3 player into a stylish and highly usable product.