Review of the Sandisk Sansa Fuze

The Sandisk Sansa Fuze is easily the best portable media player that I have ever had. The one I purchased is the black 4 gb version and since I got it, I haven't touched either my Ipod Classic or my Ipod nano.

Compared to the Ipod classic, it obviously has far less space, as the largest that you can buy one of these is at 8gb. However, compared to the nano, not only is it far cheaper, it has far more features, and a comparable amount of space. The Fuze has both a microphone in it and an FM radio. It is also able to record radio. In addition, it has all of the features that one would expect from a standard mp3/portable media player, including the ability to watch videos, listen to music, pause, rewind, etcetera. Furthermore, it is smaller than an ipod nano. The price is also a big deal if you're looking for one of these things on a budget- my Sansa Fuze, which I bought refurbished, was only $34.99.

The media player itself, outside of comparing it to the ipod, is excellent. It is clearly not cheesy and build very sturdily. The click wheel turns smoothly and the player has a very nice glossy finish. The method of navigating is also very intuitive, with a home menu that has its own button that plainly has the options of audiobooks, music, radio, settings, movies, photos, and voice (for recorded content). It allows for the customization of quite a lot of different settings, and each item on the menu can be customized individually.

There are a few problems with this. First, it doesn't come with an easy way to load with music. There's no handy application, like iTunes. The way that you have to load it is navigate to the media player in your file browser and put the individual pieces of media into their respective folders. I doubt that someone who is not that tech savvy would be able to figure this out. Also, it has a very limited ranger of support for file formats. It is able to support most common sound files, including audible .aa file format, which is why I bought it, but it can only support a single format for videos and photos. To get the file into that format, you have to use a specialized application that can only run on Windows. I was pretty disappointed when I figured this out, since I run a Linux computer. Therefore, I had to put this software on my work computer. However, the software is very intuitive and I still consider this a good buy.

Overall, this is an excellent budget media player. It is comparable to the ipod with more features at a cheaper price. I can be sure that if Sansa continues to produce, I won't have to go back to Apple for quite a long time.