The F029 measures 3.9 x 3.8 x 1.3cm and is held in place with a large, translucent plastic strap that wouldn’t look out of place on a Swatch. The 1.3in, 160 x 128, 26,000-colour OLED screen is surrounded by a brightly coloured removable bezel which, with the strap, gives the gadget a real kid-friendly feel. On the left side of the watch there are a pair of volume controls, a menu buttons and a 2.5mm earphone socket – so don’t expect to be able to use a different pair in place of the set that Aigo bundles, which are almost identical to Apple’s icon iPod set, right down to shape, size, colour and construction.

It feels slightly odd having your earphone cable running from your wrist, but you can always wear it tucked up your sleeve and out at the neck, I suppose. The F029 is crying out for Bluetooth stereo support, even more than regular MP3 players do.

The right side of the watch is home to the track skip and play/pause buttons. The top and bottom of the watch both have tiny holes that could be placed over microphones – the F029 certainly has a voice recording facility, but since it’s unclear how it’s activated, I couldn’t be sure which hole was the mic. The watch’s manual has yet to be translated from Chinese – another penalty imposed on early adopters. The top side of the watch also as a modified mini-USB port, though it’ll take any mini-USB cable.

In the technology and gadget industry, direct imports from the Far East aren’t always success stories in the UK, and Aigo’s rather peculiar F029 digital watch appears to have all the ingredients to follow this trend.

The Aigo F029 is a fully-featured multimedia player, including a photo viewer, mp3 player, video player, e-book reader and voice recorder.

It’s also worth mentioning that you can configure the screensaver to show the time, and if you disable the ‘auto off’ function it behaves as a proper watch when idle; considering it is a watch, these features are pretty handy. Of course you’ll have to remember to charge it each night, so it’s not something you’d want to rely on to get you to important meetings on time.