PQI does anything but scrimp on the goodies that are included with this product. The mPack P800 ships with one of the most complete bundles we have yet seen for a portable player.

Included with the mPack P800 are an A/V cable, USB cable, SPDIF cable, ear bud headphones, a credit card sized remote and battery, a small padded carrying case with a belt strap, a larger black camera-style case with a shoulder strap, the laptop-style AC adaptor and an instruction manual.

The included CD contains USB drivers for older Windows versions and a copy of PQI's media software for transferring audio files to the device (more on this later).

The multi-language manual was nicely illustrated and covered most of the necessary topics. The instructions are somewhat poorly written though, or at least poorly translated. In any case, they get the point across.

The credit card-sized infrared remote proved to be excellent. It actually offers more controls than the player itself, including discrete info, caption, screen size and sound on/off buttons in addition to the control functions found on the face of the mPack P800. The buttons were responsive and worked out to about seven or eight feet away, at which point we could barely see the screen anymore. Like most media player remotes, it cannot turn the unit on, but can turn it off.

The included A/V cable uses a special mini-jack to connect to the mPack player and branches out into phono L/R audio jacks and a composite video connector.

The earphones are interesting. These 'Cresyn' ear phones sport an unusual and rather attractive design, and come with sets of silver, red and gold aluminum inserts which you can use to change their colour, as well as foam covers.

Even better, the earphones come with an inline remote which can be detached and used with any set of headphones or earphones. Controls on this remote include volume, track select, play/pause and a button to activate the 3D sound effect.

This was actually one of our favourite features of the whole unit, and shows that PQI have been thinking carefully about their products.

The earphones themselves are a cut above typical bundled 'phones in terms of sound quality, but were not at the level of our test pair of Sony ear-buds.

Connecting the mPack P800 to a computer is completely painless provided you are using Windows 2K/XP. It works like any other USB storage device, and you can drag-and-drop data into the unit as soon as it is detected.

The player's directory contains various folders for different types of media so it's fairly obvious where to place your files. Unfortunately, placing music files is a little more complicated, as we will find out in a little while.

The USB 2.0 connection enabled us to transfer large DivX files within a couple of minutes, which is an essential feature in a multimedia player like this. You cannot access the controls while the mPack is connected via USB.