Kingston K-PEX Portable Media Player (2GB) review

It's no surprise to see Kingston enter the MP3 market with its K-PEX portable media player. After all, fellow memory giants Lexar and, more prominently, SanDisk have been in the MP3 loop for a while now. The K-PEX, available in 1GB (£80) and 2GB (£110) capacities, offers tonnes of features at a decent price. Where the K-PEX falls short (mainly in build quality and video support), it makes it up in its ease of use.

Design
The K-PEX (short for Kingston Personal Entertainment eXperience) looks like a miniature gaming device with controller buttons on either side of the bright and colourful 220x176-pixel, 51mm (2-inch) display -- in fact, it comes with two decent games. It's used oriented horizontally rather than vertically. The unit's budget build quality actually adds to its charm, as it's still durable enough to bang around.

While it's not small for a flash-based device (94 by 46 by 15mm; 65g), it seems small due to its gaming form factor -- it makes the 20GB Archos Gmini 402 look less than mini. The K-PEX is certainly pocketable, though the placement of the headphone jack on top extends its width.

The 2GB Kingston K-PEX next to a 4GB iPod nano

The intuitive K-PEX interface is anchored by the four tactile controller buttons on the left with the Select, Escape and Play buttons prominently on the right side. A Menu button sits above the four-way, with Power down below. The colourful animated icon-driven main menu is made up of individual pages including Music, File Manager, Game, FM Radio, Record, Video, Text, Photo, USB Host and Settings, and can be rifled through easily. Under some menu options such as Music, FM, Record and Settings, more context-sensitive options, such as User EQ (equaliser) and play speed, spill below. Even complete technophobes will be able to pick the K-PEX up and start using it.

You'll find more buttons, such as the dedicated volume buttons and the hold switch on the bottom, and the Mode, Repeat and Record buttons on top. Since these buttons are mostly secondary, they don't get in the way, though they are useful when you learn their functions. For example, in music playback mode, hitting Mode will activate the equaliser, which includes Jazz, Pop, Classic, Pop, 3D and a five-band custom user equaliser. Holding Mode switches between two cool audio-level graphics that pulsate to the beat. In addition, we rarely used the volume buttons, since you can also control volume using the Up and Down controllers.

The K-PEX's many buttons are easy to figure out