Sansa Player Review

The Good

Lets you play music in a new way; gives you the option of using memory cards

The Bad

No video support; limited number of albums available; poor battery life

The Bottom Line

If you’re interested in buying a Sansa player, you’re better off choosing one of their more traditional MP3 players, such as The View or the Fuze. The price might be a little higher but you’ll be getting something that will be useful for a lot longer.

Review

Most people are excited by new technology and want to rush out to buy the latest gadget. That’s not always the best idea. From the laser disc player to the Sony MiniDisk, some technologies have gone the way of the dodo. Now a new Sansa player has entered the market and only time (and a thorough review) will determine whether it will become the VCR or the Betamax player of the digital music age.

This new Sansa player is known as the slotMusic player. At only $20, the player seems like a great deal. However, it doesn’t come with a hard drive. Instead, you insert your own music into the player the same way you would use a CD or cassette player.

Where does the music come from? Well, the Sansa player gives you two options. First, you can choose to purchase a microSD card and transfer MP3 or WMA files from your computer onto the card. Then insert the card into the Sansa player, and you can listen to music. Of course, purchasing these cards will increase your price. A 4 GB card costs around $10 while a 16 GB card will run you more than $50.

A unique feature of the Sansa player is that you can also get your music a different way: purchasing full albums on slotMusic cards. The cards can be played in the Sansa player or in most other devices that accept microSD cards.

You can also transfer the music from the cards onto your computer. Each album costs about $15 and can be purchased at only a handful of vendors currently. That might be because only about three dozen albums are available, including Abba’s Gold, Kate Perry’s One of the Boys, and the Mama Mia soundtrack.

On the bright side, this method does allow you to listen to portable music even if you don’t have a computer. Of course, so do CD’s if you have an appropriate CD player.

Other issues include the battery life. The Sansa player uses actually replaceable batteries instead of built-in rechargeable ones. And since you’re only expected to get 15 hours of music listening out of the batteries, real music lovers could end up spending a fortune on batteries alone. Plus, there’s no video support and no screen.

You may want to check out my other guide on Creative Player and Mp3 Audio Player.