Right now, it's almost pointless to go up against the iPod with any regular kind of MP3 player, which is why even Philips has decided to follow the novelty route.
The Luxe looks like a piece of Kryptonite, as imagined in the first Christopher Reeve movie, albeit the wrong color. And if a Superman-killing ability isn't enough to make you pay $95 for a mere 2GB of memory, consider the internal extras.
First, it has Bluetooth and so can be paired with a phone, cutting the music when a call comes in and piping the caller ID to the Luxe's one-line LCD display. There is also and FM radio for those of you who still haven't tired of "all the hits from the seventies, eighties ands nineties", interspersed with endlessly annoying ads.
The Luxe will be on sale in Singapore in November, spreading out across Asia thereafter. US and European releases are as yet unconfirmed, although Lex Luthor is said to be working out an import deal.
