Sandisk Sansa Fuze

The basics

The Sandisk Sansa Fuze is an 8GB media player supporting MP3, WMA, Ogg, Flac, WAV, Audible and MPEG-4 files. It has a microSD slot for expansion, built-in FM radio, microphone for voice recording and measures 78x48x8mm and weighs 60g.

The good

Light up this Fuze and you won’t want to retire – its 1.9-inch screen may be a shade smaller and less sharp than the nano’s but delivers visual fireworks when watching short TV shows. Sound quality is crisp and open, especially when you ditch the supplied earbuds for some decent headphones. If you get bored with the 8GB of tunes on board, you can double up storage with a microSD card or switch on the auto-tuning radio to hear what’s filling the airwaves. Good quality voice recording is a bonus, and the Sansa’s battery life spans a planet-stroking 24 hours for music (although just 5 hours for video).

The bad

The control wheel isn’t quite as fast or intuitive as an iPod and the Fuze is a touch larger and heavier than its Apple rival. It’s also stripped down in terms of extras – you won’t find games, contacts, notes or calendars here.

The bottom line

The Fuze manages to be suitably sparky without either fizzling out or exploding in your hand. A cracker of a media player at an almost pocket money price.