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.
One of the smartest services to be offered on the internet was NetFlix, so it amazes me just a bit that the idea wasn’t translated to audio books sooner. But you know how the saying goes… Better late than never.
A service for me, too BooksFree.com was introduced to me recently and I thought, “what a great idea… for other people.” I only say that to make a point. I don’t read much. I used to, but I’m so busy these days that I mostly only make time for books that involve instruction and computing. Still, I found myself searching through the audio books and found something I was eager to receive. Something else occurred to me only after my selection arrived. An audio book is much easier to enjoy while writing code or working on graphics than a paperback. My hands and eyes were freed up for work while I listened and I found a new respect for audio books.
Signing up, selecting, ordering
Even though I was testing with a free month in order to write this review, I had a charge on my credit card because my discount code was invalid or I wrote the wrong one down, perhaps. Not only was I able to call the company, which is less and less an option these days, but the problem was not one for long. The first person I spoke with transferred me to someone else who quickly resolved the problem. It felt like a small company which is refreshing when you just need a small mistake fixed quickly. Anyway, beyond that, my signup process was pretty quick and easy. The process involved three basic steps. The first is to choose the plan that fits your reading/listening needs and budget.
Once your choice is made, they throw a form at you. It’s really not that bad, though. For the most part, this is just all your shipping and billing addresses, name, any special discount codes, username and password, etc. I had this one filled out in about a minute.
The last step to get all signed up was to enter in my credit card information and agree to the terms of service.
Using the service to get and return books
Once I had an account set up, using the service was a little frustrating at first, only because I kept searching for stuff that I’m guessing doesn’t exist as an audio book like any of the O’Reilly stuff. It makes sense but like I said, that’s mostly all I read. Eventually, I searched for Douglas Adams, which brought back all of his books that I’ve read and a few more selections. I searched and tried browsing for other stuff. Browsing is not as useful as the search, but I find that true for most product-centric sites.
After picking out the original, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, I waited for it to show up and within a few days, it was in my mail box. As I mentioned before, I found that I could easily listen and write code at the same time, so I was able to get through the whole thing rather quickly. A few days after pulling the CDs out of the packaging, I put them right back in, re-sealed it, and dropped it in the mail. A few more days, and I received an email to let me know it was safely back at BooksFree.com.
Is it worth the price?
In America, there’s no doubt that the economy is hurting and most people are keeping a tighter grip on their money. In such an economy, will a service like this do well? The fact is that there are lots of luxury items and services still doing just fine in our economy, and this could very well be one of them. The trick is to offer something that is still valuable enough to the consumer that they’ll opt to keep it over some other luxury when trimming the fat from their spending. And it doesn’t hurt if the cost is tempting. Originally, I was wondering why I’d ever want to pay $23 for one book a month. It’s the one-at-a-time plan, but I assumed that with shipping and the time to enjoy the book, etc., I’d only ever get one book a month out of the deal. Assumptions are often wrong, which is why I wanted to actually get and return a book. For me, the whole process, including enjoying the book, ate up about nine days. If you wanted to, then, you could probably get 3 books a month out of the deal, making the rentals cost about $7.50 per book to rent. Of course, moving up to the two-at-a-time plan for $27.49, you could probably enjoy 6 books per month for about $4.58 each. Additionally, a family who all enjoys books could benefit quite a bit from the six-at-a-time price plan. It’s still not the most appealing idea when you could always pop into the library and check out books, but if the audio book selection is better, that might make a difference, as well as the obvious benefit of not having to leave the house. I like any service that makes things easier for me and I’ve already pointed out my new respect for audio books, but should you use the service? If the convenience is important and you like to enjoy more than a couple books per month, I think it’s worth a try.
When I sat down to write this review, I wanted to come up with some witty title that described how I feel about the Sansa slotMusic Player. I tried, but I just kept coming back to one thought: As a portable music player, it’s pretty great, but as a portable player as cool as it is for only twenty bucks, this thing rocks.
The design When I saw the slotMusic Player on the Sansa web site, it looked like a light-weight plastic and I was a little worried that it would feel that way, too. When I opened it up, though, it was a pleasant surprise. In the package was the player, some ear bud headphones, a single AAA battery to power it, and little booklet to help you use it. The booklet is a unique way to help people use the device and is a lot more inviting than the typical black and white all text instruction manual. Instead of lots of boring reading, you get seven cards bound together, each containing a mini quick guide.
The player, itself is small (1.45″ x 2.84″ x .6″) and weighs 1.7 ounces, so it’s a great size and weight for a portable player. It’s also very curvy and looks smooth. All this beauty comes at a price, however. The one thing I noticed right away when I started it playing music was that it doesn’t have a clip. Without any kind of belt or shirt clip, I ended up just throwing it in my back pocket, but a clip could have been very handy. I also would have loved to see a small digital display, but I don’t expect that to come bundled with the low price. If I had to pay another dollar for the clip, it would be worth it, though. The player uses a microSD card for storage, so you can have 512MB for a few dollars or as much as 8GB for about $38. I love a device I can upgrade, but I also love a device that comes with a standard power source. The face that it uses a single AAA battery means I can just buy a pair of rechargable batteries and swap them out as needed after about 15 hours of playback without worrying about having to buy an expensive proprietary battery. Next to the standard headphone jack are the volume + and – buttons and the play/pause, forward and back buttons are on the side, accompanied by a little blue LED.
Use your own music
One of the cool things about this is that you can just buy an album already loaded onto a slotMusic card for about $15, you can make your own mix, or both. Sansa was cool enough to send along the Weezer Red Album for me to test with, and I was able to add in some of my own MP3s. The album came with a little USB microSD card reader. I just slipped the card in, dragged some tracks over right from iTunes, and put the card back into the player. OK.. Truthfully, I had to convert the tracks to MP3 in iTunes first, but as long as you have MP3 or DRM-free WMA tracks, you can just drag them into the My Music folder on the slotMusic card and you’re ready to rock. The album also came with a little plastic protective case, and an insert booklet. Not bad for a digital album, but I think they’ll do much better if they make the digital version cheaper than the CD.
Playing music on the go
Navigating through and listening to the music on a slotMusic player is pretty simple. To get started, in needs power. With a little pressure, I slid off the outer shell of the player, inserted the battery, and slide the shell back on. To turn it on, just press the play button for a second and it’ll start playing right away. Everything else is intuitive. For example, if you press the forward or back buttons, it’ll go forward a track or to the beginning of the current track. Press the back button twice quickly to go back a track and hold the forward or back buttons to skip forward or back a little in the current track. Pressing the play/pause button will pause or unpause the playing and holding it for a second will turn the player off. You can use the included headphones or any other headphones with a standard plug. Better still, you can plug the player directly into the Aux port in a newer car to play music through your car’s system. That’ll require a basic cable you have to buy on your own from just about any electronics retailer.
The final thoughts
Sansa is making some good moves in a tough music player market. I initially drooled a bit over the Fuze, but I’m glad Sansa sent this player my way so I could really get an educated opinion of it. Having one in my hand sold me on it a lot more than seeing it online, and now that I’m sold I’m convinced that it’s the best $20 music player that I’ve had the fortune of playing with. The albums are a harder sell, but if you’re looking for a birthday gift for someone, find the right album and pair it with this player for a gift I’m sure they’ll like or just pick one up yourself.
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.
