There are plenty of pocket media players around, many costing a good deal less than £150, but we'd wager there are next to none that work without a battery or mains connection.

The clue here is in the Baylis brand name. Sixteen years ago, Trevor Baylis OBE invented the wind-up radio, for use in places where mains power is scarce or intermittent (like Devon). Now he's taken the same wind-up technology - a small hand-wound generator coupled to a Lithium-ion battery - and applied it to a media player.

There are a couple of unique features to this 2GB, flash-based player, which flow directly from the wind-up generator. Firstly, it comes with a selection of USB-to-mobile phone connectors and these can be used to provide emergency charging to most types of phone. A minute's winding gives around two minutes talk time. Secondly, there's an LED torch built into the top end of the player, which is powerful enough to find your way by and gives about 25 minutes of light for each minute on the hand crank.

Enough of the power system, what's the Eco Media Player EMP-MX71 like as a media player? Well, there's none of your mirror-finish, wafer-thin, Jog-Dials-R-Us trendiness about the Baylis player. It's a substantial bit of kit, coated in grippy rubber with a - let's face it - rather poorly-styled set of buttons on the front, looking like a bow tie if you're generous and a dog bone if you're not.

The buttons work well enough, though the menu and power buttons, which are set away from the rest, are a bit small and feel imprecise. The menu system offers audio and video playback, a photo viewer, FM radio (where the headphone cable doubles as an aerial), an eBook reader and direct recording to MP3. Recordings can be made from the player's built-in microphone or, via the supplied cable, from any line output.

Sound output through the supplied headphones is surprisingly good, with detailed mid-range and high frequencies and a reasonable bass presence. The 46mm LCD display is not the best example we've seen and isn't helped by a character set with no true decenders, which looks particularly odd when using the eBook reader.

Photos can be displayed from any SD card and extra memory can be added to the player in this way, too, to add to its 500-track capacity. It supports MP3, WMA, ASF, WAV and OGG, which is a good range. Video has to be in MP4 format, but a software converter is supplied for AVI and MPEG.

This is like the Swiss Army knife of media players, with enough extra functionality that you can forgive it its comparative bulkiness. The sound quality is fine, though its colour screen is no great shakes. If you lead an outdoor life and want some rugged entertainment, the Baylis EMP-MX71 is probably unbeatable.