SanDisk Sansa Fuze 8 GB Video MP3 Player (Silver)

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Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 3.1 x 1.9 x 0.3 inches ; 2.1 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B0015KYV3Q
• Item model number: SDMX14R-008GS-A57
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (229 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #157 in Electronics (See Bestsellers in Electronics)

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  Electronics > Portable Audio & Video > MP3 Players

• Date first available at Amazon.com: March 13, 2008

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description
With the SanDisk Sansa Fuze, you can fuse your portable entertainment, featuring 8 GB of storage. Listen, watch, and play all day with 24 hours of battery life and room for up to 2,000 songs**. Watch your favorite video clips on the Sansa Fuze's 1.9-inch color screen. Measuring just 0.3 inches thin, the Sansa Fuze marks the next wave of music and video players.

Your portable music machine with 8 GB of storage. (Click image to view larger.)

The MicroSD/SDHC memory card slot means storage possibilities are essentially unlimited. (Click image to view larger.)

Smaller than a credit card and as thin as a pencil, the new Sansa Fuze MP3 player looks great--and has the brains to match. (Black player shown here; click image to view larger.)

Audio Player
Smaller than a credit card and as thin as a pencil, the new Sansa Fuze MP3 player looks great--and has the brains to match. With room for up to 2,000 songs**, you can listen all day long. Jam to FM radio with 40 preset stations, play with the built-in voice recorder, and listen to your favorite audiobooks wherever you go. And with 24 hours of battery life, you're free to listen, watch, and play all day--literally.

Watch Your Favorite Videos
The Sansa Fuze comes with 8 GB of built-in memory enough to store 5 hours of video playback. Watch your favorite TV video clips from wherever you are. To ensure speedy file transfers, the unit features a USB 2.0 connection. Simply connect the player to a PC, and start dragging files from your Windows Media Player 10 or 11 applications.

Expanded Capacity
With an option to extend the capacity, its MicroSD/SDHC memory card slot means storage possibilities are essentially unlimited. Expand your music collection, show albums of photos up to 4000 images*, and watch your favorite videos on those long trips.

Compatible Formats
The player supports MPEG4 video files and audio files saved in MP3, secure and unsecured WMA, WAV, Audible, and Overdrive file formats.

FM Radio
If you're feeling like a break from your own tunes, or want to dial in the TV frequency at the gym, use the digital FM tuner. Save your favorites on the 40 user presets.

Voice Recorder
Use the voice recorder with built-in microphone to take memos, record meetings or lectures, or capture whatever else you might feel inclined to point a microphone at. When you're ready, transfer your files for listening on your PC.

What's in the Box
SanDisk Sansa Fuze 8 GB MP3 player (silver), earphones, USB 2.0 cable, quick start guide

* 1 gigabyte (GB) = 1 billion bytes; some of the listed capacity is used for formatting and other functions; thus, it is not available for data storage

** Based on continuous audio playback at 128 kpbs MP3; video playback at 512 kbps/ MPEG 4; photos based on 1.7 MB average file size; battery life and performance might vary depending upon usage and settings; battery not replaceable.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

255 of 258 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Amazing Little Digital Audio Player, April 9, 2008

By	Phillip Rogers - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

What I really like about it is the size, capacity, and most of all price.

The codec support is about average, not great but it satisfies my needs as 99% of my music is encoded in mp3 format.

One of my dislikes is common among all sandisk mp3 players(and most other players) is that the charging/syncing port is proprietary. Not a big issue, mini-usb would have been nice though.

Video playback was smooth(used a mp4 350MB recorded tv show) no sync problems between the audio/video and no stuttering. Too small to really be considered for video playback though.

Picture viewing is about the same as video and by that I mean it works great and the pictures look ok but the screen is so small it is not practical to show off pics with it.

Voice recording works well, don't have to hold it directly to my face to clearly record sounds...although I'm not sure what this can be used for but it is there and works well.

The radio works great, easy station browsing, easy to add stations to presets, and reception is very clear.

The sound is very accurately produced at all ranges. The included headphones fit well and sound good. The volume goes up much higher than I could ever think I would need it. For those of you who are runners, I use the earphones that come with it and they direct the sound very well into my ears so I do not have to make it too loud and can still hear some of the environmental sounds: wind noise is hardly noticeable.

The screen is easy to see in all light conditions, bright, and easy to read.

The build quality feels great. It has generous weight to it, light enough to take running and not really notice it but heavy enough to give it a solid feel. The front of the device is a bit shiny and does tend to attract fingerprints easily but not scratches so far.

Expansion port works great, currently using a 4GB microsdhc to shuttle podcasts/audiobooks between it my pc.

Navigation is a breeze and the menus are very intuitive, the scroll wheel/buttons are easy to find and press even with the player not in sight.

Syncing I very easy to do without the need for bloated software. You can add media to it via a file explorer(drag & drop) or one of several media players like WMP, winamp, and a variety of others. The datbase is auto-updating and works flawlessly. I have seen a few reviews that say the database refresh takes a while. With a completely full internal memory and half full 4gb card my refreshes only take 15-30 seconds.

A few final notes. The boot-up is about 3-5 seconds from off to playing music after pressing the power button. It will resume the music exactly where you left it when turning it off. Actual usable memory is about 7.8 GB. 4 1/2 out of 5 stars, best on the market right now but not perfect of course.

UPDATE: 2 new "cons" I have come across. Technically the device is performing as intended but I am hoping for a firmware update to "resolve" these.

1. When scrolling, the speed of scrolling does not increase. Basically takes forever if the song you want is in the second half of the alphabet. This will probably be changed in the next firmware update though.

2. The podcasts are sorted by most recent first. This kind of makes since so you dont have to scroll to the bottom to listen to the newest one but it also causes a problem if you are trying to listen to a series in order and it starts playing through them backwards. :( Probably no "fix" for this issue although being able to choose how it is sorted would be great.

133 of 136 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Would be great except for a few issues, June 30, 2008

By	P. Worley (Pacific Northwest) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The price, capacity and design of the Fuze 8GB are great, however I have had some issues with my Fuze since picking it up a couple months ago:

1) The screen is easily scratched: I have been carrying it in the front pocket of my jeans with nothing else, and the display screen has lots of little scratches on it (they showed up the first day even). Not at all scratch resistant, if you get one make sure you get a shield for the screen. Strangely enough the finish on the rest of the front of the Fuze is much more scratch resistant (though not completely so either).

2) Proprietary connector: The Fuze uses a proprietary connector to connect to your computer's USB port rather than a standard USB Mini-B plug. This means if you lose it you can't just use a standard cable, you'll have to buy a new proprietary cable you can't use anywhere else. Additionally if you want to use a wall adapter to charge your device you'll need to purchase another cable.

3) It takes too long to refresh: Each time you unplug it from your computer or plug in a MicroSD card, the Fuze goes through a process of "Refreshing your media", presumably scanning the internal and/or external memory for music. This takes about five minutes on mine, with a nearly full (7GB) internal memory and no external memory. Even if no changes are made to your music (i.e. you were just plugging it in to charge the battery), it will go through this process each time you unplug the device from your computer.

4) Playback issues: This may be an issue with my particular Fuze, but on occassion it will refuse to play particular tracks. After cycling the power it will then usually play the tracks fine.

5) Playlist problems: I have been unable to utilize playlists with much success. The Fuze recognizes standard M3U playlists, however accessing and scrolling through them on the Fuze is painfully slow (I just looked into one of my playlist, it took 15 seconds for the list to show up, and maybe 2/3 second to scroll down to each song off the bottom of the screen). Additionally, the tracks in the playlist show up with the artist's name in front, so for long artist names you can't see the song name at all, unless you wait for the name to (slowly) scroll to the right revaling the rest of the information.

6) Scrolling issues: In general, scrolling is pretty rapid (unless you're looking at a playlist). Unlike the iPod however, the speed is fixed; continuously scrolling through your music will not 'accelerate' the scroll speed after several seconds. I scrolled through my artists from A-Z, it took 39 complete rotations of the scroll wheel to reach the bottom, and again to go back, taking maybe 20 seconds. With a full 16 GB of music, or fewer songs each from more artists, this could easily double.

With the exception of the easily scratched screen and proprietary connector, I would think these issues could be resolved via a firmware update. Hopefully as the Fuze becomes more mature these issues will go away, as they mar an otherwise great device.

74 of 78 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best all-around digital media player!, April 18, 2008

By	William O. Moore - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Hands down, this is the best digital media player I have purchased. After three failed attempts at buying an updated media player (Insignia Pilot 8GB - terrible sound quality, Creative ZEN 8GB - terrible interface software with the computer) I finally found the Sansa Fuze.

This player had everything I was looking for: low price point, large memory capacity (8GB), an exandable memory port (microSDHC), FM radio capability, and small size.

The unit itself looks and feels of quality construction, the interface with the computer is simple (just drag & drop to either internal or external memory) and it has amazing battery life. I've had no problems charging the unit on my laptop or via a USB A/C adapter. The manual clearly states that some USB ports are not powerful enough to charge the unit, particularly those on the front of the computer, and in that case to try the back USB ports.

As for video quality, I can't speak to it. The Fuze has only a 1.9" screen, so if you bought it to watch videos you must have microscopes for eyes.

Overall, the Sansa Fuze is the best bang for the buck in terms of sound quality, construction, ease of use, and functionality. If you're looking for an excellent digital media player, you've found it!