No matter how ugly somebody’s kid is—even if he looks like a goat—etiquette prohibits discussion of the malady. No such rule exists for hardware reviewers, so let’s get this out of the way: SanDisk’s flash-based Sansa MP3 player crawled straight out of the ugly ditch. No one will stop you on the street to ask you about it, and Newsweek won’t be putting it on the cover. Ah, it’s just as well—the Sansa leaves much to be desired in an MP3 player.

Let’s consider the controls first. How do you turn on the player? The play button? Nope. You have to hold down the menu button instead. Fine. How do you flip through tracks while a song is playing? You can’t. The scroll wheel only controls volume during playback.

Speaking of the scroll wheel, it’s a victim of the same kind of poor industrial design that led to the Chernobyl disaster. It’s so stiff that it requires considerable effort to move—so much effort that fine control with one hand is virtually impossible. You’ll end up advancing the volume by four clicks instead of one, and even using a fingernail to scroll had us struggling to target the desired menu selection.

Audio reproduction falls below average, and well below that of premium players like the iPod or those from Creative Labs. Fortunately, there is a custom EQ facility, and the SRS WOW effects add welcome dimension. And SanDisk wisely includes a pair of earbuds with bass-boosting nubs that deliver a macho bass punch, which is great for running, working out at the gym, or indulging in other active-lifestyle customs.

We appreciate that you can augment the 1GB of built-in storage with additional memory via the SD card slot, but we can’t recommend the Sansa unless your grandmother recently passed away and bequeathed to you several high-capacity SD cards. And even then, we’d still urge you to consider the good woman’s sage advice: You better shop around.
—Logan Decker

Month Reviewed: October 2005
Verdict: 4
URL: www.sandisk.com