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The CDJ-2000's screen is impressive.

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Pioneer made its first major stamp in clubland in 2001 with the CDJ-1000, and steadily the 1000s have become the industry standard DJ device. There have been the updates to the CDJ-1000 design with the MkI and MkII versions, but with laptops becoming more and more popular in the clubs, it seemed that Pioneer was in need of something special to keep it on top.

So this is its answer - a fully-fledged digital media player, retaining the robust looks and feel of the original CDJ while providing all the connectivity and modern features that the new generation of DJs demands.

The first thing that strikes you when you take the CDJ-2000 out of its packaging is the sheer size of the unit – it's more comparable to larger Pioneer's DVJ device. The size increase is mainly due to the huge WQVGA screen (480 x 234) which has been included without compromising on standard button sizes or, indeed, the size of the platter.

Inside, the unit has been improved with a brand new Wolfson DAC processor that when hooked up digitally to a mixer does sound better at high volume levels that the CDJ-1000.

Switching on the unit brings to life the usual backlit buttons but with the added benefit of a backlit jogwheel and huge glowing screen - you're not going to have any problems navigating your way around the CDJ-2000 in a dark club. Plus, if the screens or the jogwheel glow too bright for your taste you can tweak the brightness in the settings page very easily.

When it comes to the more exciting new features, the CDJ-2000's main focus is on managing your digital music library and integrating seamlessly with laptops, MIDI and other new technologies that making their way into the DJ booth.

Rekordbox

The backbone of this is the included Rekordbox software collaboration between Pioneer and MixVibes - a sort of iTunes for DJs. Once installed on your Mac or PC the software enables you to import your MP3 collection (either manually or existing iTunes Libraries and playlists), tag it, set cue and loops points and analyse and prepare your music in a similar manner to when you import tracks into Traktor or other DJ software.

This is a breeze, simply dragging tracks into Rekordbox starts the analysing, works out the BPM and allows you to tag tracks and rate your music collection for recall on the CDJ-2000 later. You can colour code your music and add all the ID3 information you might need to help recalling the tracks easier. At the top of the software, you can view the analysed waveform and click it to set hot cue and loop points, which again can be saved on USB key or SD card, allowing any CDJ-2000 or 900 to be able to recall them.