Digital Trends

The Nextar T30 portable media player will do video, photos, music, and FM radio, brings a 3.5-inch LCD display, and carries only a $99 price tag.

Sometimes it seems silly to pay $69 for a display-free music player that has to be completely configured using desktop software—especially when a few dollars more will get you a media player that can display photos and video plus pull in your favorite FM stations. The Nextar T30 is just such a beat, offering 4 GB of onboard memory (and an SD slot for another 2 GB of storage), an integrated FM tuner, a voice reorder, and a 3.5-inch 320 by 240-pixel LCD display.

"Users will find our new T30 portable media player [..] the perfect solution for enjoying their favorite movies, music, and memories virtually anywhere they want," said Nextar founder Eddy Zheng, in a statement. "Its slim size of just half an inch in depth and light weight of just 3.7 ounces allows this player to go virtually anywhere with you."

The T30 runs off a rechargeable lithium ion battery and can provide eight hours of music or four hours of video playback on a single charge. On the audio front, the T30 supports MP3 and WMA, and WMA DRM9 media; the unit can also display JPEG and and BMP images, but video has to be converted to AVI (Nextar offers WIndows-only software to do the trick) before it can be played back on the T30.

But the most appealing aspect of the T30 might just be its price: $99, available now at retailers like Wal-mart, BonTon, DBL, and Seventh Ave.