SanDisk Sansa M260 4GB

The SanDisk Sansa M260 MP3 player was a steal at £24.99 from BigPockets(avoid free advertising). It replaced a Matsui one I had that was rubbish & would randomly play tracks or do them in alphabetical order no matter what..! Incredibly annoyingThis player is brilliant; it's as simple and as straightforward as that. It has 4GB (3.8 really) storage space, which is easily enough for 30 to 40 albums encoded as VBR MP3's, with the quality setting maxed out to 100%. It has very high volume level and 5 preset equaliser settings {Pop,Rock,Classic,Jazz & User defined). It also has a tuner built in, all in a package barely bigger that a box of matches. The tuner is fantastic and seems capable of receiving a signal no matter where I am, which is pretty much all I need to say about that. It has 20 radio pre-sets to store your favourite stations. Onto the MP3 player side of things: there are some important facts that should be stated to anyone thinking of buying one of these units Windows operating systems will not display the unit as a drive in explorer unless you go to the settings menu and change the USB setting from 'Auto detect' to 'MSC' mode, then the drive appears and you can start copying your favourite tracks across. This is not mentioned anywhere in the user manual or on the website, but anybody not techno savvy may think the unit is faulty and return it only to encounter the exact same problem again. It must be on auto to cater for Linux and Apple OS X operating systems, but windows users need to be aware of this. The second thing is the playlist support. The playlist and all files need to be kept in the ROOT directory of the flash player, so if you are like me and keep all albums in their own sub-folders for neatness, the playlist option will not function properly. Again this is not mentioned anywhere in the literature provided as far as I can see!This player is an IPOD beater in every respect; granted it does not display pictures or video but it is also a hell of a lot smaller and more practical because of it. Display is very sensibly laid out, everything is where it needs to be: with remaining track time, artist, track title & total tracks remaining on the album. It also beats the iPod on price hands down (if you can get one for the price I paid). I would recommend this player to anybody who is looking for very high sound quality, large storage space, a built in tuner and the right price.

I love this SanDisk Sansa M200 Series player and am only considering buying the new E200 series 6 gig player because of the 2 extra gigs. This is the best player on the market. Maybe I just hate the IPOD unfairly, I don't know but I like to root for the underdog. This player is the underdog but it is a much better value than the IPOD.