Sansa Fuze Review

Having said all this though, the Sansa Fuze is an mp3 player, and when it comes to actually playing music it really impressed me. I owned a 2nd generation iPod Nano for over two years and loved it, but the Fuze sounds better and costs half as much! It looks good too, even if it does seem to be a Nano replica. The materials are very durable. The back is made of a rubber material that is wear-and-tear resistant, is comfortable to hold and adheres slightly to any flat surface you may place it on - such as a table. The click-wheel and centre button are made of a similar material and are surrounded by a blue ring-like light which lights up whenever the screen is on. The front is made primarily of a hard matte plastic that is more or less entirely scratch proof. It is, however, reflective and as a result it can be hard to read the screen in direct sunlight without turning up the screen brightness. On the other hand, turning down the brightness can significantly increase battery life; which is fantastic either way. The manufacturers claim it can last for up to 24 hours of play and in my experience this is correct. Of course, if you are watching videos or constantly checking the screen to see what track is playing, check the time etc. the battery will be used up considerably faster but then the screen isn’t so good anyway so you probably won’t be! This is the kind of player where you can switch it on and then just put it in your pocket and forget about it as the music plays. The price will leave you assured of this. I purchased the 4gb version from Amazon for just over £50, absolutely fantastic value for money. The box contains the player, a small pouch to keep the dust off the device, a proprietary USB cable, a manual, a small CD which contains an electronic version of the guide and a solid pair of earphones. The latter are far better than the majority of earphones that are included with mp3 players but if you truly want to appreciate the sound quality of the Fuze you will need to purchase a separate pair of high quality earphones. I use a pair of approx. £30 Sennheisers that do the job well. To charge the player without connecting to a PC you will have to purchase a wall charger separately – they tend to cost in the region of £10. The mp3 player itself also has a few extra features, there is an FM radio which can be scanned to find the clearest stations and also recorded. This recording capability extends to a built in microphone, which allows you to record goings-on around you with reasonable quality. You can also rate songs and videos while they play and add them to a ‘ToGo’ playlist, which is identical to the iPod ‘On The Go’ playlist feature to the point where you can add songs by holding the centre button as you do on the iPods. One feature that gives the Fuze a massive boost however is the expandable memory. On the left-hand side of the device there is a space for a MicroSD card. I bought an 8gb card for my 4gb player for £13. 12gb of memory for £65 – superb. As yet, other players, including the iPod line do not offer this and the feature should not be underestimated. Not only do you have almost unlimited memory capacity as more and more expansive cards are produced but you also have the ability to transfer music, videos and photos from device to device. Something that will no doubt become more common as future players will inevitably include this feature.