It's officially titled the MFB 512. At least those are the figures printed on the equally uninspiring front panel, in turn encased by a spectacularly dull, grey plastic cover.

Not thrilling to look at, but a different matter when the ear and bank balance are applied – a digitally sampled drum machine for (just) under £300. If you were looking for a rough description, you could say it was a digital Dr Rhythm since many of the programming features are similar to Roland's original DR55 yet with a memory space closer to that of the TR606.

It's made in Germany, and is a small operation from the home hobbyist looks, but it's being supported in this country by the might of Syco Systems who are releasing it under their own name.

So the 'Syco' can store 64, 16 beat patterns and a separate 64 fills, plus eight songs of 256 measures each. Already a good start.

I can't pretend that it's immediately easy to operate. The front panel is crammed with tiny toggle switches, several of which have three positions, and it takes a few minutes' practice to do the right things in the right order. For example, the different patterns are chosen in binary using seven switches... the first one on for pattern one, the second for two, the first and second for three, the third for pattern four, and so on.

You construct your rhythms by choosing the memory position, clearing it, then turning a rotary knob to the drum of your choice. The programming is then a carbon copy of the DR55 – you work through the 16 beats using two buttons to load in a drum, or a silence, until a red LED lights to tell you you're back at the beginning of the pattern. The loading buttons are small, and again your fingers are cramped to reach them, but the money has been spent on sound rather than an elegant facia.

Repeat the procedure for the snare and handclap, but watch out for the low, mid and hi-toms, and the hi-hats and cymbals. Only one tom has been digitally recorded and it's shifted in pitch electronically to fit the three options, (a habit shared by the original Linn). Therefore ALL your toms have to be loaded in one pass through the 16 beat pattern. You can't have more than one tom sounding on any single beat, and the same goes for the cymbals and hi-hat.

A song is composed by choosing the appropriate pattern on the binary switches, and hitting the load button which automatically moves you on to the next measure where the same pattern can be punched again, or another one selected. The songs are editable – you step through the list removing a wrong rhythm, replacing it with a right one – but you can't insert extra new material, neither can you dial up the naughty pattern as you can on the TR606. If it's in measure 255, hard luck, that's 255 pushes on the button.

But that's not the point. It's SOUND we're discussing, especially as the current cheapest commercially available digital drum box is nigh on £900. On the other hand, don't think the Syco is an instant challenge for, say, the Drumulator. The sounds are not consistently as excellent. For example the toms let it down severely. They're very short, no natural ambience nor 'skin' to them, and generally a bit 'dinky'. But the base drum is fat and hard with just a touch of click to the beginning, not too much, and the snare is broad with a strong shout from the wires, almost military rather than the crack of a pistol shot.

I expected the cymbal to be as shortlived as the toms, but it's a reasonable crash/ride compromise with a touch of sizzle – again not as pure and bell like as a Drumulator or Linn, but more realistic than the white noise and ring mod creations of an analogue drum machine. The same goes for the hi-hat which is short and crisp, though some judicious eq-ing would help it cut through.

And speaking of eq, recording, desks and such like, there are several valid bonuses that the Syco delivers in these departments. Firstly there are separate outputs for every drum on a set of two, five pin din sockets at the rear. This machine is also tuneable over a limited range. If you've got a small screwdriver handy, you can take the pitch up or down by adjusting a tiny potentiometer. Don't expect to convert a high tom into a bass drum, but it is enough to darken the tone of the cymbal, for example.

The Syco is at its best in a track – the stereo output lets you position it as a kit, and all the sounds become more convincing when there are real instruments around them. Even the toms warm up a bit. A drum machine isn't an upfront solo gadget, after all. Well, not unless you're Trevor Horn.

For composition-via-rehearsal-improvisation (mucking about), the binary switches turn out to be an advantage since you can easily 'play' the patterns during a song.

All the selections are locked into one 8K chunk of read-only-memory, so you can't swap sounds around. The shortest drums, like the bass and snare, are a single complete sample. The longer decay of the cymbal is achieved by continually repeating a much shorter sample, then gating it electronically in the same manner as an analogue rhythm box. That's why it seems static in character compared to a full length recording.

In all, not glamorous to look at, but an excellent bargain when you consider the nearest digital competition.

£299