FIRST OF ALL we all agree that the last two years belong undoubtedly to Apple's IpoD, a very fascinating and lifestyle associated multi gadget. Even though it is definitely the most successful of all music boxes, the review that follows is not about the IpoD but an older MP3 player I was even surprised to come along in Ciao's product list. It is all about the SanDisk Sansa M250- one of the first MP3 players with advanced memory in order to store a great amount of music.

SanDisk MP3 players were firstly introduced in the market in 2004 featuring the launch of the Sansa e100 Series. The target markets for those players were people who are nowadays addressed and classified as the 'bargain hunters'. This was specifically for those looking for good deals and value of money. In order to promote the product to those segments, the Sansa Series was simply the product with 'lots of features for less'. Even though we are talking about a budget gadget, the features and capabilities it offered were extensive.

You can browse the m250's music library by title, artist, album, genre, spoken word, and recordings, and it supports playlists as well as an on-the-go Favorites playlist of up to 30 songs. These are all functions offered by all the modern MP3 players in the market. Furthermore the main menu includes Play Music, FM Radio, Recorder, and Settings, and overall navigation is extremely easy, thanks in part to the big controller buttons, which personally I found to be one of the unattractive parts of the gadget. Moving on, thee is a blue backlit LCD which enables the user to see the artist, song and generally all the album's information as well as the file format. According to many previous users the backlight should have been a bit more brighter in order to provide contrast and there is also the lack of a bookmarking feature for audiobooks.

The SanDisk Sansa m250 cooperates well with Windows Media Player and subscription-based applications such as Napster. Another important feature is that it will automatically organise all your files saving you a great amount of time. According to the company the m250 series shows up as a drive in Mac OS X. Battery life from a single AAA battery is rated for 19 hours, which is decent but not great for a flash player. The most annoying thing I discovered was the fact that transfer time over USB 2.0 was on the poor side at 1.1MB per second, which makes it very slow, and actually took me ages to upload my music.

First of all let's not forget that although this gadget has many features, it is considered a MP3 player of low budget. That simply means that even the series of functions it offers is extensive, there are not the best of quality features in the market. The 2gb storage capability is a great amount of music. Normally of course most of you will have more that that but your favorite music will not exceed 2gb (I am making an assumption). The buttons are very bid and extremely easy to use even for a first time user. The menu navigation is also easy to use and the large screen makes it even easier to navigate. Regarding the battery, I could say that I found it very satisfactory, even though as a precaution is good to carry one more.

The package box includes all the necessary software you need. You will be equipped with the Windows Media Player 10 if you simply want to organize your files. This is considered to be a very technologically intelligent software but you should only use it for the above reason. If you do not really bother to organize your files then do not waste any time on this software-just drag and drop your files in the Sansa's directory.

Although this player should be the cheapest one in the market right now it is not the best. As it was mentioned above it is very good equipment at this price (£50) and storage ability. It was designed for those who are looking a multi functional gadget at a reasonable price. I can assure you that even some of the features it provides are not the best in the market right now it will definitely please you and meet most of your needs.