Product Reviews

Not many MP3 players present a challenge to the iPod when it comes to looks, but Sandisk's Sansa e260 holds up well in comparison to Apple's style icon.

In photographs it looks remarkably similar to a black iPod nano. However, the Sansa player is significantly thicker and has a translucent rotating control ring in place of the nano's touch-sensitive scroll wheel. The control ring looks stylish and lights up blue each time it is moved. It's easy to use, but feels a little unpleasant under the thumb. It's raised above the five surrounding buttons, which makes them difficult to press.

Like the iPod nano, the e260 uses flash memory to store music and photos, which can be displayed on its 1.8" colour screen. Unlike the nano, the e260 can also use its screen to play back video files, although its small area

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and narrow viewing angles make this less of a pleasure than on iRiver's U10.

Photo and video files are transferred to the player using Sandisk's Media Converter application. Dropping supported file types on to the converter's window places them in a list, which is then converted and transferred to the player at the press of a button. The application works well and supports a wide range of source files, though we found sound quality in transcoded video files to be poor.

This MP3 player can connect to Windows in one of two ways. A menu option allows you to choose between MSC mode, where the player appears simply as a removable storage device, or MTP mode, where it is recognised by Windows as a portable media device. MTP mode allows you to transfer and play back rights-protected WMA files and requires the installation of Windows Media Player 10.

The e260 has no custom EQ mode, but has a range of presets that should suit most tastes. We found the Pop setting best for most rock and dance music. The supplied earphones look a bit awkward, but they're comfortable to wear and sounded well above average. The player sounded great through our high-quality headphones.

Although the e260's controls could be better, this is a good alternative to the iPod and iRiver players. It's not as sleek as either, and its screen can't match that of the U10, but it's good value for a 4GB flash player.