Thanks largely to the popularity of online file sharing, the ubiquitous MP3 digital music format is finding its way into many devices - from mobile phones to the home stereo system.
The most striking feature of Philips' new line of Emotive Micro Audio Systems is they are packaged in three different, rubberised styles with distinctive names: Matt (red), Blast (silver) and Gloss (green).
The promotional material suggests the system is composed of three contoured units, but there is a fourth, slightly smaller box containing the power adaptor.
Set-up is simple and the speaker wires are jack plug-type rather than bare-wire connections. The 50-watt (RMS) amplifier, two-way bass reflex speaker system and three-inch full-range woofers offer above-average sound quality.
As far as performance goes, the system did justice to jazz tunes, with high-pitched notes sounding fairly sharp and crisp, but our techno discs were a bit of a letdown, mainly because the bass notes were only reasonably - and far from impressively - resonant.
Other features, such as a MiniDisk (MD) player and optical output jack (to record to a separate MD recorder), are conspicuously absent.
The system does support MP3-CDs and the memory can be programmed to play back up to 99 tracks from a CD. The remote control is as slim as two credit cards, so it will not add significantly to the pile on the coffee table.