Ah, Sony. Where would the audio market be with you? Probably not too badly off considering the massive range of capable competitors out there, but most audio-heads in the know will argue that the Japanese behemoth produces the best sounding portable players known to man.

It's not one to be caught short either, and will continually update the range whenever one of its boffins notices a lightbulb floating above their head. What we're getting around to talking about here is the new NWZ-A820 series of video MP3 players, which has added an interesting new weapon to its already formidable audio arsenal.

A quick rattle through the specs shows a 2.4-inch screen, up to 16GB capacity and a battery life of 36 hours for music and 10 hours for video. Decent enough, but not particularly ground-breaking, though we were impressed by the alleged 30 frames per second for video playback, which is pretty much DVD quality in its smoothness.

The flag-waving for the 820 series will be done by the built-in Bluetooth connectivity, which can send stereo sound to a device compatible with everyone's ‘love to hate' wireless technology.

The series should be available from April in the UK and while there's not much info on prices yet, you can expect the 16GB version to cost around 320 Euros (roughly £240).