Product Reviews

If you've got £90 burning a hole in your pocket and you're just desperate to spend it on a new MP3 player, then SanDisk is eager to tempt you away from that shiny iPod Shuffle. At first glance, the two players really aren't that dissimilar. Just like Apple's Shuffle, the new Sansa c150 is capable of storing enough songs to keep you entertained for hours and fits neatly into the palm of your hand. What's more, the Sansa has twice as much storage space as the Shuffle, so it will keep those feet shuffling for twice as long.

Once you've installed the drivers, the c150 pops up as a device in My Computer. Transferring your existing music is as simple as dragging-and-dropping

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files using Windows Explorer. Converting audio from CDs is handled by the supplied Rhapsody software that, like iTunes, has its own online music store built in. Rhapsody also allows you to manage your music collection and transfer it to the c150, but it's little more than a mediocre clone of Apple's iTunes software.

The c150 is capable of displaying photos, but its teeny 30mm screen size makes it far too small to be of any genuine use. The screen can also display cover art for albums, but at such a small size the feature seems utterly pointless. Another feature of dubious usefulness is the Sansa's built-in FM tuner. Quality is reasonable, but we'd rather have done without the radio and cut the cost of the player.

Thanks to the supplied headphones, sound quality wasn't much cop at all. Bass wasn't deep or well-rounded and the lack of treble made even quality recordings sound a little flat and lifeless. Changing the headphones to a £10 pair of Sennheiser MX300s made a big difference, though.

For £20 more than an iPod Shuffle 1GB, the Sansa is a great player. It can't compete with its rival's good-looks, but it costs less per GB and offers more storage. This makes it far better value for money than the iPod.