SanDisk Sansa Fuze 4 GB Video MP3 Player (Black)
by SanDisk
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List Price: Our Price: $62.95 You Save: $17.04 (21%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $32.95 (click here) Category: Network Media Player See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of SanDisk Sansa Fuze 4 GB Video MP3 Player (Black)
Customer Review: I liked it so much that i had to write a review?
Summary: 5 Stars
So let's get this straight. I was a Creative nut through and through until I had two of them break in less than three years and I decided to get a Sansa Clip. That was a great mp3 player with the same major flaw as the Sansa Fuze (we'll get to that). That one got stolen (bye bye $15) and the next one to go on sale was the Fuze. Over time I've come to really appreciate this piece of hardware.
Pros:
-Putting video on is easy (Sansa has an auto converter that I hear is decent, there is a third party auto converter called video4fuze that is fantastic, open source and free)
-5 band eq
-Very good voice record quality (better than Creative MuVo)
-Folder navigation (Don't you hate not being able to find that one mp3 that you forgot to put ID3 tags on? Solved. This was a feature missing from the Sansa Clip that I sorely missed coming from the Creative camp.)
-Strong build quality (With one exception)
Cons:
-Screen scratches very easily
-Screen impossible to view in sunlight (Sansa Clip had this problem too)
Nitpicking Cons:
-New price (I suggest shopping around for a refurb. When it comes to Sansa products, refurbs are 40% cheaper and 110% more reliable)
-Advertisement for "SlotRadio" is on your main menu and it can't be removed without downgrading your firmware.. Which you don't want to do
-Music jumps while looking at photos, even with latest firmware. (But who looks at photos on their mp3 player?)
As an Anti-iPod music fanatic, the Sansa Fuze has been my buddy on my commute to work. It's my radio in my car, my tv/radio on the train, and my radio walking to my office. It's even my radio/white noise generator while at work. All on one charge? Yup.
Customer Review: Amazing!
Summary: 5 Stars
When I bought this, I was looking for something cheap, I really didn't care how many things it could do, because anything would be better than the one I had at the time. My previous mp3 player that hap no screen to speak of, only help 43 megabytes, took 8 hours to charge and only held 2 hours of battery power. When this came in I was very suprised with its many functions, and at the quality of it. This device has many useful and just generally nice to have things such as:
The ablitity to record at least an hour worth of memos (with a very strong mic)
The ability to record radio
FM radio tuner (good reception)
The ability to change the color of the back light
The ability to show album art
It will shut the screen off automaticlly (you can chose how long the back light will stay on) but still play your music, it saves battery power
The ability to create playlists
The ability to shuffle your music or have it in alphebetical order
The ability to chose a sound equalizer that fits your type of music
Comes with good headphones
Excellent sound quality
Plays many diffrent formats of music and video
Your videos play very clearly, the screen is a good size
It's expandable
Long battery life
Easy to sync music and charge (just plug it into your computer)
Holds pictures
Can loop your pictures (make a slideshow) to a song of your choice
Shows time and date
The ability to caterogarize music however you wish (song, genre, album, artist,playlists, or how you rate it)
You can play audiobooks
Pefect size, it'll fit right in your pocket
Easy to use
All in all this is a stylish unit with excellent quality!
Customer Review: Best Value for the Money
Summary: 5 Stars
My wife bought a different MP3 player in anticipation of a 12 hour each way road trip. On the surface, it seemed the same as the Sansa Fuze, but with the addition of a built-in digital camera and a lower cost. However, the manual was barely written in English, the user interface was clunky and cumbersome, and it didn't support organizing the music into folders the way our ripping software liked to put it. Despite saying it supported MicroSD, it only supported the old standard of up to 2 GB cards. Since our music collection requires around 8 GB, this was a source of great annoyance to my wife. Luckily, she had bought it plenty of time in advance. We returned it and ordered the Sansa Fuze.
However, it was scheduled to arrive for the day before our trip, so we wouldn't have time to mess with it if it wasn't up to par. We put all our music on an 8 GB MicroSDHC card and hoped for the best.
When it arrived, we put our card in and it worked flawlessly. The user interface was intuitive enough that we didn't even have to read the clear and concise manual. It has a much more compact, sleek size than we expected from the pictures, and it came with a soft cloth protective cover. The sound quality is great, and we were able to fit our entire music collection along with a couple of audio books, without having to carry a bunch of extra MicroSD cards along. Most importantly, myself as an engineer and my not very tech savvy wife were both happy with it.
Two minor points of contention: you can't make playlists from the device, although you can make them on your computer and the Sansa Fuze can use them, and the other colors than black inexplicably cost more.
Customer Review: Too easy
Summary: 5 Stars
I've had the 4GB Fuze less than a week, but I'm thrilled with it. My last MP3 player was a 500MB MPIO that I paid almost four times as much for. It had a much smaller, monochrome display, but otherwise similar functions: Voice recorder, FM radio, equalizer, etc. But the software application was overly complicated, and frequently locked up, after which all songs uploaded to that point were lost - very frustrating.
The experience with the Sansa has been very refreshing by comparison - everything went without a hitch, and the player is a real pleasure to use.
My only complaint is that the file structure you see when viewing the device in My Computer differs from what you see on the device itself. The device has several "New Folder"s that I have to navigate through that don't show up on the PC, and if I rename a file via the PC, the new name shows up when the device plays that selection, but the old name remains in the list of selections. Confusing.
I also don't understand why Sansa chose such a large connector instead of a mini-USB when only a few pins are used, but there must be a reason.
Other than that, I'm very pleased, and highly recommend the Fuze.
Edit:
After a week of use I noticed that if I plug the headphone plug in all the way, the audio disappears from both channels except for a clicking sound about once per second. This occurs regardless of which headphones I use. To listen to content I have to pull the plug out ever so slightly. If it gets pushed back in while in my pocket, it's back to click, click, click.
Electronics Expo has given me an RMA to return it for a replacement.
Customer Review: Do it your way, NOT the iTunes way
Summary: 5 Stars
We have three iPods and one Sansa Fuze in our house. By far, the easist one to manage and to use is the Fuze. Why? Because you don't have to deal with the tyranny of iTunes. I could go on about how awful iTunes can be (especially if you're on a Windows PC), but you probably already know that. Well, kiss all that hassle goodbye with the Fuze.
The Fuze has a settings option for either MTP mode (Media Transfer Protocol) or MSC mode (Mass Storage Class). Want to manage your library using Windows Media Player? No problem. Want to use Napster or Rhapsody for downloads? No problem. Use the MTP mode and it'll act just like a software-managed library.
Me, I don't want any of that stuff -- I have a massive music collection already and just want to load what I already have onto a player. I use MSC mode and the Fuze shows up as another drive in My Computer. Then I just dump my files into the Music folder on the drive. It's that easy. I can even copy my FLAC files over and play those back. And one of the coolest parts is the expandable memory. Add a microSD card and it shows up as another removable drive in MSC mode. Drag and drop and Bob's your uncle.
The interface is simple to work too. My wife is a total illiterate when it comes to gadgetry and she figured it out in about a minute.
This little unit's a winner, and the price is right too. As I type this, you can get the 4GB for around $70 and an 8GB card for around $12. That's a 12GB flash player for less that $85. You can not beat that price. And if you think about it, there's really no limit if you want to add more cards. Expandable is the way to go.