As much as I love my technology, my wife is pickier about hers. I just love trying new gadgets, but she wants to buy a gadget once and she wants it to work perfectly, or I’ll hear about it. She has an iPod Nano that I gave her for Christmas in 2005. It’s engraved and it has a special place in her heart, but now she has a new portable music player. SanDisk sent a new Sansa Fuze my way and I had it long enough to get some photos and some first impressions before she snatched it away from me, claiming it as a wifely benefit. Of course, she then asked politely if she could have it, but I knew how much she wanted it, so now it’s hers. Before I let her keep it, though, I took it back long enough to play around and regret giving it up.

The hardware
In my Sansa slotMusic Player review a few weeks ago, I noted that I was pleasantly surprised with the hardware. This time, I expected to like the hardware, and I did like it. The physical controls felt very familiar, having used an iPod Nano for so long, and the home button on the front is nice to have, too. Many of the phones I review have it and I think any product that lets you navigate more than a couple steps away from the home screen should have a home button. The right side just has a power/hold switch and the left has a slot to insert a microSD card for additional storage. The player I received came with 8GB internal storage, but they included an 8GB card to drive home the power of additional storage via microSD. Just in case you’re not sure what I mean, my wife’s whole music collection fits on the nearly 16GB usable storage space. Better still, we can buy a new 16GB or 32GB card in the future as the need surfaces. While they offer 2GB and 4GB models of the Fuze at lower prices, it just makes sense to buy the 8GB as more and more of our media is stored and carried digitally.

The bottom of the Fuze has the docking/charging connection and a standard headphones jack. A charging/syncing cable and a pair of decent headphones were included, along with a soft carrying pouch. The color screen is 1.9″ which isn’t very big for playing videos, but it’s pretty decent for everything else. The bonus feature I got excited about was the FM tuner. So many players pack in features for digital music and forget the FM tuner. This wasn’t a big deal until I showed up at my local gym and couldn’t watch the news while I worked out because I didn’t own a portable FM radio with headphones. Seeing this function on the Fuze was refreshing. The Fuze is available in blue, red, pink, black or silver, but I only got one of them, so you’ll have to hit the site to see it in the other colors. The battery is said to give you about 24 hours of music or 5 of video, though I haven’t fully tested the battery life yet. Finally, the Fuze has a microphone for the built-in voice recorder software.

Using the Fuze
The first thing I tried to do was copy movies, pictures and music to the Fuze to jump in and start playing with it. Much of it didn’t work, complaining that I needed to use the provided Rhapsody software to transfer content to the device. This was a disappointment to me because I like to be free from the ties of additional software. If you don’t mind installing more software, the Rhapsody software can help you manage everything, but it would be nice to have the option. The package included $50 worth of music from Rhapsody, but that’s only if you sign up with a credit card. I was generally disappointed with the Fuze’s ability to easily bring in my existing music. As I said, though, this was mostly because I have to be tied to software I don’t think I need. That has always been by big complaint about the iPods and the same holds true here, it seems.

The software on the player, itself, is a pleasantly different story. Navigating to and through the various menus and options was as simple as a flick of my thumb on the navigation wheel. The user interface doesn’t offer anything too crazy or overcomplicated. It’s just simple and gets you where you’re looking to go. Selecting media is a familiar experience in that I was able to drill down by artist, album, etc. The FM tuner has another nice surprise, too. I can record radio with it! The critical missing feature, in my opinion, from radio is the ability to pause and rewind like I can on my TV system. The ability to record radio and play it back on my music player is a nice feature and a step closer to perfect.

Can it kill the Nano?
Apple has a good grip on the industry, but wherever there is an industry leader, there’s an invitation to try and unseat them. I’ve seen a lot of companies try and some have made good products, but many just didn’t bring anything new to the table. The Sansa Fuze offers three things many players don’t. It offers voice recording, expandable storage via the increasingly popular microSD format, and FM radio with 40 presets. It’s nice to see a player on the market that could make the Nano sweat a little for under $100.

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