Probably one of the few MP3 players from an established consumer electronics brand that still supports SD card expansion, the SV-SD770V is Panasonic's latest flash-based MP3 player that offers both slickness and robustness in design.

Design
The look of the SD770V belies its weight. The almost credit card-sized MP3 player had a very robust feel to it though its exterior is constructed out of plastic and rubber. We like the neat layout of the playback controls, located on the rubberized control panel to the right of the screen. The panel offers very smooth tactile feedback unlike typical buttons made of plastic.

Till now, Panasonic has yet to hop onboard the color-screen bandwagon. The SD770V still relies on a 1.5-inch monochrome screen for display purposes. This means the SD770V does not have support for video or picture viewing, which firmly places this device in the Stone Age in terms of display aesthetics.

However, this is not to say that the SD770V's display is less brilliant than its color-screen brethren. The light grey font set on a black background offers very good contrast, though the reflective surface of the display makes viewing under bright sunlight intolerable.

As an improvement over the SD750V, the SD770V has a new Search button which allows the user to look for tracks based on ID3 tags or its initials; this will prove useful if your SD card passes the 1GB mark. What was less helpful was the Touch Slider feature. By enabling it, the center part of the control panel functions much the same way as the touch strip on the Creative Zen Vision:M. But while the SD770V strip worked well for navigating through the menu options and song lists, like the iriver H10, the touch strip was not clickable.

The mirror sheen on the SD770V gives it a classy look but also makes the surface liable to scratches. It would have been nice if Panasonic had remembered to include a carrying pouch.

Features
Removable SD card? That works both ways. Storage capacity will not be tied to what is available out-of-the-box, but determined by the size of the SD media used. As your budget expands, so can your SD card. Though the prices of SD media have been dipping, the base price of the SD770V (S$249) is already higher than some 1GB MP3 players. Since Panasonic did not bundle in an SD card with the SD770V, you will have to factor in the cost of an additional memory media on top of the player.

The SD-Jukebox is the Panasonic equivalent of Apple's iTunes music management software. Unlike some unbranded SD card-based MP3 players we've seen, the SD770V does not support drag-and-drop functionality. Music files can be transferred only via the software, and once transferred can be played only through the SD770V. Similarly, music files placed directly onto the SD card will not be playable on the player.

Standard on the SD-Jukebox are CDDB support, ID3 tag editing and CD ripping. On further testing with the software, we realized the SD-jukebox did not play well with MP3 files. Firstly, CD ripping into MP3 was not supported. The software only allows ripping from audio CDs into either WMA or AAC. This is a limitation we have yet to encounter in other software. However, if you already have another music-ripping app installed (Windows Media Player), you can still transfer MP3 tracks into the SD770V.

We were surprised when we were unable to transfer our MP3 test tracks (encoded at 320kbps) into the SD770V. After consulting the manual, we realized that the SD770V only supports MP3 files encoded at bitrates 192kbps and below. According to Panasonic, this is partly due to the SD card's transfer rate.

Like our previous look at the SD-Jukebox, the Music Sommelier feature still strikes us as a beguiling graphical playlist generator. It analyzes tracks based on tempo, beat and other audio characteristics, and plots the tracks as dots on an X-Y axis graph. Panasonic describes these as the emotive and activity axis. By picking Counting Crows' Mr Jones as the representative track for "Pop" and selecting the search radius range (minimum, standard, maximum), the Music Sommelier will draw a circle on the X-Y axis graph with the representative track dot as the epicenter. Any tracks dots that fall within the said circle will be included in the "Pop" playlist.

The SD770V also includes a voice recorder and FM radio, though FM/line-in recording is excluded from the feature set. On top of the claimed 72-hour battery life, Panasonic has also included a quick charge function which gives the SD770V 3 hours of juice for a 3-minute quickie via the adapter. Yeah, you read that right. Panasonic's heart is in the right place; the SD770V comes with its own AC adapter to pony up the 490mAh battery.

It's rare that we mention earphones, but Panasonic's deserves a mention. First, the bad. The bundled earphones must be meant for a giant; it was a tight fit for our mortal ears. However, kudos to the Japanese firm for squeezing in dual drivers: One for bass and one for the mids and highs. The sound quality from such an implementation puts Panasonic way ahead of its competitors in terms of bundled earphones.

Performance
FM is definitely not the SD770V's strong point. The auto-scanning feature managed to miss five major stations in our test location, which was pretty subpar performance. In order to ensure that this was not due to external interference, we tested the SD770V in another location and the FM auto-scan missed four stations.

We knocked the SD-Jukebox previously for slow file transfers, and this time, it's the same story. To transfer 240MB worth of MP3 files, the SD-Jukebox took 21 minutes 33 seconds to accomplish the task (0.19MB per second). Direct drag-and-drop of the same batch of files took 0.4MB per second. Even Sony's SonicStage music management software, which we used to complain as the slowest in terms of transfer rates, was faster (1.62MB per second) when we reviewed the Sony NW-E005.

Battery life is the SD770V's strongest card. Testing with 240MB of MP3 files played on a loop, the player juiced out only after 79 hours 1 minute. That's a pretty phenomenal playback time.

In terms of equalizer controls, the options are limited. Settings are focused on the low end and there are no user-defined equalizer controls. For the headbanger in you, the SD770V has two levels of bass under its equalizer settings. Take note that while the first level worked well thumping up the low end, the second level was beyond the capability of most earphones due to the driver size. However, if you like your bass distorted, go for it. For tighter bass (on level two bass setting), you will need decent over-the-ear headphones.