My little rant came as a reason for wrath and vengeance from Apple fans. So, I’ve thought that bringing up some good alternatives wouldn’t be a bad idea at all..

SanDisk, for those who don’t know it, is a big memory manufacturer, which also makes various portable media players. I’ve been using memory cards made by them for a while now. My USB flash stick is also made by them, and overall I’m very happy with their product quality.

To explain the title, this device is a worthy competitor of the new Nano. It has a bigger screen, longer battery life, more memory, a fair price, and, in my opinion, better looks.

Read on for the details.

I’ll do a little comparison now.. Kind of a face off between the two.

1. Both devices have QVGA screens. The Sansa’s screen is 0.4″ larger diagonally. This isn’t a lot, but at those sizes, it makes quite a difference (e.g. the Nano’s screen vs. the Nokia N95 screen).
2. The iPod lasts for 24 hours when listening to music or 6 hours of video. Very good figures, indeed. This one does 35 hours of music, or 7 of video. Cool, isn’t it?
3. The Nano has either 4GB or 8GB of flash memory available to the user. This one gets 8GB or 16 GB. And guess what, you get double the gigs at the same price… That is, $149 for 8, or $199 for 16. Not bad, really…
4. The iPod has coverflow. None for the Sansa. Just a circlish interface, with plain, fast text for the music. Nothing fancy.

Some may bring up the trouble of finding accessories for other players than Apple’s. Look here for a change. There are brand accessories, “Made for Sansa”.

Another disadvantage of this device would be its size. Yes, it’s bigger than the Nano. Not that wide, but definitely longer. Luckily, it doesn’t get less pocketable because of that.

Other advantages? Well, it supports quite many codecs, the included software can convert unsupported ones to good ones. More formats are due to come via firmware upgrades. Also, it doesn’t need iTunes or any dedicated software, it just works when plugged in. It also has a radio with 20 presets you can save. Another “minor” thing is the SDHC slot, for (huge, I might say) expandability. There’s also a microphone for voice recording.

If I were to buy a PMP now, it would definitely be one of these, with 16GB of (expandable) space. Take a look at the full specs on the product page. If you just want to see more pictures, here’s a gallery.