Sansa Nation

The folks at the gadgeteer did a review of the new Sansa SlotMusic Player and they had some good and bad things to say about it. Sansa took a gamble by releasing yet another MP3 player in a market with so much competition and with the Apple iPod so far ahead of all of them. They did go on to say the fact that a computer is not needed for the Sansa SlotMusic Player is a unique feature as the player has no internal memory and is loaded with a MicroSD card that goe for about $14.99 a pop. Although it doesn’t have a display but at $19.99 that shouldn’t be a concern at this price point anyways. One major drawback is that there only 30 albums available in MicroSD form so far, but if you have music you want to put on a MicroSD card this little player may just do the trick for you.

-Ray

[Source: gadgeteer]

This holiday season, many people will want to get a great gift for their love ones. But with the threat of a recession, people will be looking for the best deal out there. If you are thinking about getting the new SanDisk Sansa slotMusic player, out friends at LetsGoMobile have reviewed the Sansa slotMusic player. Check it out:

SanDisk Sansa Slotmusic player

The Sansa slotMusic Player brings yet another dimension to SanDisk’s Sansa audio/video product family, which includes the popular Sansa Fuze and video-centric Sansa View, both of which accept with slotMusic cards. The Sansa line offers consumers unprecedented choice for enjoying their favorite media on the go through affordable, easy to use, fun & fashionable music players.

SlotMusic cards

Announced last month, slotMusic is a new format of high-fidelity, DRM-free MP3 music on a microSD card, which gives consumers the ability to easily listen to - and quickly swap - their favorite songs among a mobile phone, personal computer, and any MP3 player with a microSD slot. slotMusic cards available this month will feature nearly 40 of the biggest names in music from all four major music labels: EMI Music, SONY BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group. Artists on slotMusic cards include Robin Thicke, Katy Perry and Coldplay.

SanDisk slotMusic player accessories

Perfect for those on the go, the small device can easily be tucked in a pocket or purse, with a weight of a little over two ounces and dimensions of 2.75″ W x 1.4375″ H x 1.4375″ D. SanDisk has also developed a special line of Sansa slotMusic player accessories, including a Sansa card wallet, an armband, and additional slotMusic player “shells” for customizing a player to one’s own tastes. In addition to slotMusic cards, this convenient MP3 player can play songs from any microSD card with music encoded as MP3 and WMA (DRM-free only) files. The industry leader in flash memory cards, SanDisk is currently selling microSD cards in a range of capacity with up to an astounding 16GB of capacity. 16GB can hold up to 4,000 MP3 songs.

SanDisk Sansa music players

“With no need for computers or cords, the Sansa slotMusic Player gives consumers more time to play, and less time to worry about managing or downloading their music,” said Daniel Schreiber, senior vice president and general manager for SanDisk. “SanDisk is all about building products that are easy for consumers to enjoy. Just insert your favorite artist’s slotMusic card into the Sansa slotMusic player and press play.”

SanDisk slotMusic player price & availability

The Sansa slotMusic Player (Street price $19.99) was made to play slotMusic card albums or a self-loaded microSD card full of music. The effortless player doesn’t require a PC, Internet or any time spent managing music. Consumers simply choose their slotMusic or music-filled microSD card, pop it into the device and will be enjoying their favorite tunes in seconds. The unique, artist-branded slotMusic Player is a stylish, all-in-one package, which includes both the slotMusic card and a trendy player bearing their favorite artist’s name and image. The branded player comes pre-loaded with an album on a 1GB slotMusic card. (Additional content on the card may include liner notes, album art and other one-of-a-kind content personally chosen by the artist.) Artist-branded slotMusic players will retail for a street price of $34.99. The Sansa-branded players ship with a customizable black shell, earphones and battery. The new Sansa slotMusic Player, both Sansa-branded (without cards) and artist-branded (including cards), is expected to be available from retailers in Europe and other regions of the world in 2009.

- Geoff

[Source: LetsGoMobile]

Here at SansaNation, we try our hardest to provide you with the best reviews of all the Sansa products. Today, we provide you with a review of the SanDisk Sansa Fuze MP3 player by Mike Wilcox of SMH.com. Check out this short but complete review of the Sansa Fuze and give us some feedback on what you think.

SanDisk Sansa Fuze MP3 player
RRP: $233 8GB, $180 4GB, $145 2GB
sandisk.com.au
Rating: 3.5/5

If you’ve been sizing up a third-generation iPod Nano but wish it had a few extra bells and whistles, SanDisk’s cheeky look-alike deserves careful consideration.

Following in the footsteps of its bigger brother, the Sansa View, the Fuze has much the same menu options and the iPod-inspired navigation wheel. The inclusion of an iridescent blue ring and handy instant home button on the front are the most notable differences. Unlike cheaper models in the Sansa range, the Fuze is solidly built, with a non-slip coated casing and scratch-resistant glossy front.

As is often the case with music players, the bundled earphones are no match for the superior sound of the Fuze, though if you do decide to stick with them, a selection of preset EQs and a custom setting can help tailor the audio.

The Fuze is available in 2, 4 and 8GB models and the option to add to this is also available with your choice of MicrosSD cards. The player sees additional storage as an extension of the built-in memory and rebuilds a single database after detecting new additions.

Along with its music, picture and video playback duties, the Fuze also packs in an FM radio and microphone. Radio broadcasts can be easily recorded and saved, but there’s no way to rename files until transferring them to a computer.

Standard audio formats are supported and files can transferred painlessly through software such as Windows Media Player or dropped and dragged onto the device manually while connected with a USB cable.

To view videos, however, requires Sansa’s own software to encode them correctly, and they aren’t that crisp because of the screen’s average resolution. This is also evident throughout the various menus and text. Anyone expecting to watch quality videoon-the-go is in the wrong market here.

The Fuze may not bring any revolutionary features to the truly saturated music-player market but the features on offer and pricing are certainly a wake-up call for the Nano’s maker.

- Geoff

[Source: SMH.com]

Are you considering purchasing a Sansa View 16GB MP3 player? Do you want to know the pros and cons of the Sansa View 16GB? Well Scott Merrill of CrunchGear has written up a very comprehensive review of the Sansa View 16GB player that I think you will find very informative. Check it out and let us know what you think.

I like Sansa media players.  I always have.  They’re not quite as sexy as Apple iPods, and they’re not that much cheaper, really.  The reason I like the Sansa players is because they don’t require any special software on my computer — heck, the review model I received contained only the player itself and the USB cable: no software CD at all!  As a GNU/Linux user, I really enjoy being able to connect a Sansa player to my computer and have it immediately recognized as any other USB media.  I can simply drag-and-drop media files into the proper directory, and they’re ready to play.  And I can easily use a Sansa device in lieu of a USB memory stick, if necessary.  But enough about my personal preferences: let’s take a look at the Sansa View 16GB.

The Sansa View can play MP3, WMA, WAV, and DRM-free AAC audio files, as well as MP4, WMV and H.264 video.  It has an FM tuner, and the ability to record FM broadcasts.  You can also use it as a digital voice recorder, which is good for students and blackmailers.  The screen sports a 320×240 resolution: the same resolution as both the iPod Nano and the Zune, but at 2.4″ it’s bigger than both.  It also has a micro-SD slot to expand its storage capacity.

Pros

The View is a shade smaller than an iPod Touch, though not as slim, which makes it comfy enough to hold.  The scrollwheel is responsive, and easy to use.  Battery life is acceptable but not remarkable.  The user interface is simple: the main menu has only four items: music, videos, photos, and more.  Navigating through the UI is easy.  As an added bonus, it’s possible to delete files from the Sansa View without using a computer, which can be handy if you load up a song or video only to find out that you absolutely hate it and never want to hear it again (but see below for a big caveat).

The earphone jack is on the bottom of the unit, which didn’t make a lot of sense to me at first.  But then I stuck it in my shirt pocket and understood: when it’s in my pocket, I won’t be looking at the screen, so put the headphone jack closest to the control wheel, which you are likely to use (or try to) while it’s in your shirt pocket.  The included earbuds felt slightly larger than those bundled with iPods, but I found them to be perfectly comfortable.

Cons

The thing that really irks me about the Sansa View is that it uses a non-standard USB cable.  I long for the day when any device that connects to my computer by USB uses one of the standard USB cable connectors.  I’m tired of special, expensive proprietary cables cluttering up my workspace!

The Sansa View isn’t yet supported by RockBox firmware.  This may only be a bummer to folks who have a large collect of music in Ogg Vorbis format, though.

I tried to delete a single song and thought I ended up deleting all the songs from that artist.  Here’s how: after turning the unit on, before playing any music, I navigated to the music menu.  I selected “Unknown Artist” (because I didn’t set id3 tags on these songs), then “Unknown Album”, and then finally drilled down to a specific song.  I pressed the down button, which brings up the menu.  From the menu, I selected “Delete Song”.  I took note that it said “Song” in singular.  I pressed the middle button and was presented with a confirmation dialog that asked if i was sure I really wanted to delete the song (again, singular).  I selected Yes, and then I was returned to a screen that said, simply, “Empty”.  Navigating backwards, I found that the Sansa thought that the contents of  “Unknown Album” has been deleted.  Oddly, though, the next morning when I turned on the unit, I found that “Unknown Album” had been restored, and that only the song I had deleted was, in fact, deleted.  Very weird.  Moral of the story: you probably don’t want to delete files from the Sansa using the Sansa itself.

The Bottom Line

If you have an aversion to iTunes lock in, or don’t want to pay the Apple price premium, the Sansa View 16GB is a great digital audio and video player.

- Geoff

[Source: CrunchGear]

PC World, which boasts being “the world’s leading technology media, research, and event company” recently reviewed the Sansa® Fuze™. Labeling the Sansa® Fuze™ a “worthy Nano competitor”, the article discusses many of the positives of many of the Sansa® Fuze™. From actual size to its flash-based expandability, PC World noted many of the obvious advantages of the Sansa® Fuze™. They went further in depth and put it up to some special PC World challenges too. They’ve included an in-depth test report in the investigation. Read the full article titled SanDisk Sansa Fuze Flash-Based MP3 Player to check out the results of the audio-quality lab tests, and read which other MP3 players PC World thought the Sansa® Fuze™ was comparable to (even better than in some respects!)

While searching for the latest Sansa news, I found another review of the Sansa Clip by a Jewish newspaper called the Haaretz. It is a short and sweet review that outlines all the basics, giving it an over all score of 7.9. Check it out:

The first recommendation for Sansa Clip users is to replace the included earphones with decent ones. Roi Gordon, of WiseBuy, says that the fact that the listening experience is far more enjoyable with better earphones is no small matter for a player from the makers of Sandisk, which is known for its mediocre sound quality. Convenience: Tiny. Attaches to a lapel with a clip or slips into any pocket; is easily operated using sensitive, lit buttons. The one-inch screen provides a clear display, even in daylight. Despite the comfortable navigation of this device, transferring music from a computer to the player is a bit awkward. You cannot, for example, transfer files when the player is recognized as an external drive, but rather only by switching it to MTP status (via a software program) and synchronizing it using Windows Media Player version 10 or higher. At least you can delete songs directly from the player, a function that did not exist in previous Sansa models. Another nice feature is the ability to download an update that facilitates clear display in Hebrew. This player also has a microphone, but reasonable recording is possible only up close to the source.

Battery: Promises 15 hours of continuous play, but operated for only 14 hours.

Pro: Small and light, easy to operate, better sound quality than previous Sandisk players.

Con: Poor quality earphones; playlist transfer via Windows Media Player only. Price: NIS 200 for 2Gb.

Score: 7.9

-Jameson

[Source: Haaretz]