Over the years they’ve managed to couple great value with decent usability and pretty slick design too. The battery life of 28.2 hours for audio and 6.5 hours for video is plenty impressive.SanDisk’s MP3 players have long been the popular alternative to Apple’s all-conquering iPod players. Across genres, we were greeted with clear, solid sound. The Fuze powered through with reasonable-though not super thumping-bass response nice, rich mids with smooth vocals and an impressive amount of high-end detail. We tested it out with the Shure E310 earphones and the Creative Aurvana Live headphones and were not disappointed in either case. It also wasn't quite as encompassing as the sound coming from the Creative Zen V Plus-but it comes close. Let's be frank: the Sansa Fuze doesn't offer the sparklingly stellar audio quality presented by the likes of the Sony NWZ-A810 or the Samsung P2. If that still doesn't provide enough music for you, there's an FM tuner with autoscan and presets, or you can record your own beautiful voice via the built-in mic. It accepts high-capacity cards, which are available at up to 12GB as of press time. On either side of the Fuze, you'll find a power/hold switch and a microSD card slot for adding more memory. The only one that does not is the proprietary syncing port built into the bottom of the device-we'd much prefer it if SanDisk stuck to mini USB. The Fuze offers a few other attributes of note, most of which add value to the player. If you hear a song that you like playing on a channel, pressing down on the scroll wheel brings up the contextual menu where you can rate it and/or add it to your library. The player operates on the Rhapsody DNA platform, so it supports not only subscription content from the service, but also Rhapsody Channels, which are essentially Internet radio on the go. On the audio side, the Fuze offers support for MP3, WMA, secure WMA, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, WAV, Audible, and Overdrive. If you still choose to add this type of media to the player, make sure it is in JPEG or MPEG4 SP format to ensure hassle-free playback. At 1.9 inches, the Fuze's screen isn't exactly optimal video viewing anyway, so this isn't too big of a deal. This dulling shadow also affects photos and videos, slightly diminishing the overall quality of viewing. Still, this is a minor gripe, and part of the problem is actually caused by the screen's protective coating, which casts a grainy shadow on the LCD. And yet, as with other Sansa models we've come across, the inner menus are dull, and while we appreciate the option to at least change the wallpaper color, we'd love to be able to set a favorite photo as a backdrop or otherwise tweak the look-and-feel to our personal preferences. The icon-driven main menu is nice enough to look at, and the device is very easy to navigate, with music organized into playlist, artist, album, and so on. This observation in quality unfortunately does not extend to the Fuze's interface. It seems more durable and high-quality than early Sansa models. But the build is more like that of the View, with a clickable scroll wheel, a shiny, plastic face and smooth, metal backside-the Fuze definitely has a solid, weighty feel to it. At 3.1 inches by 1.8 inches by 0.3 inch, the Fuze is only a bit bigger than the Clip overall, and it comes in the same color options: black (2GB, 4GB) blue, pink, and red (all 4GB) and silver (8GB). SanDisk thought up the perfect name for the Fuze, because the player really resembles a Sansa Clip and a Sansa View blended together. Sure, it's a bit of a Nano clone, but it also sounds good, offers plentiful features, and is cheap as all get-out-just $80, $100, and $130 for the 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB models, respectively. Such is the case with the Sansa Fuze, a slim device with a high-quality feel and several shiny color options. While cheap pricing has made SanDisk a real contender in the portable audio space, the company is not content to rest on that fact alone to draw new customers, persistently tweaking its new offerings in an attempt to make them better. SanDisk continues to add to its line of Sansa MP3 players, which has been attractive to consumers from the start thanks to the low price point at which the company can list its players.
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