The Sansa Fuze from SanDisk, is a cool little MP3/4 player along the same vein as the iPod Nano. We’ve recently been sent one to play with so here are our thoughts and findings (or a review so to speak).

Aesthetically the Fuze is a cute little player.The physical UI consists of a rotating front dial which also acts as the 4 navigation buttons with the center button for selection. The display crisp with a resolution of 220 x 176, large enough for watching the odd music video but you wouldn’t want to watch a feature length film on it. Sound quality was good (though as with just about any MP3 player the supplied headphones aren’t the greatest). What most impressed me about the Fuze are the extra features that you don’t find on other (note iPod) players, including:

• Built in microphone
• FM radio
• microSD Slot, a really cheap way to expand the capacity
• Easy to transfer files (drag and drop) without the need of propriety software

Though there are a few downsides:

• Propriety USB connection, it obviously comes the cable but a standard mini USB connection would be much more convenient especially for charging
• You bookmark videos but not audio books

The Fuze comes in 2, 4 and 8GB versions with prices starting from ~$70 at Amazon.

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