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Fuzzy Logic Sansa Fuze or Sansa Snooze?
Fuzzy Logic Sansa Fuze or Sansa Snooze? | Sansa Fuze or Sansa Snooze? |
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| by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Saturday, 15 March 2008 | |
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Page 1 of 2 From the navigation wheel to the cutesy colours, the Sansa Fuze packs in additional features at a lower price point than the comparable iPod nano line, but can’t quite manage to clone everything: the Fuze’s screen is 0.1-inches smaller at 1.9-inches instead of the nano’s 2-inches, and the Fuze is thicker at 0.3-inches (7.62 mm) to the iPod nano’s 0.256-inches (6.5 mm). It’s these little things that matter to consumers, along with the ease of use in transferring music to the device (that iTunes delivers in spades) that consumers really care about - not the inevitably cheaper price, the addition of FM radios, memory card slots, voice recording or other features that iPod-clone makers desperately include to differentiate their models, without selling anywhere near the number of devices that Apple sells every day worldwide. Still, none of this is to say that the Sansa Fuze is a bad product, not at all. Indeed, it looks like one of their best mp3/media players yet, and perhaps offers SanDisk their best chance yet of taking more sales away from Apple and SanDisk’s other competitors. The Sansa Fuze plays mp3, video, audiobooks, photos, FM radio and has a voice recorder, and will land in US stores come early April, then set to head off to Canada and Europe in the late northern hemisphere spring (towards the middle of the year), with “other regions of the world to follow”. This means Australia should see the Fuze from mid-year onwards. Similar to the iPod nano, the Sansa Fuze will come in a range of colours – pink, red, blue, silver and black – and will come in 2GB (US $79.99), 4GB (US $99.99) and 8GB sizes (US $129.99), although the addition of a Micro SD HC (high capacity) slot means that a Micro SD card can be inserted to increase the overall capacity. But with SanDisk’s current largest Micro SD HC card at 8GB costing US $139.99, this price is US $10 more than the 8GB Fuze itself – you’d almost be better off having TWO Sansa Fuzes instead. That said, the price of the 4GB card is only US $49.99, and the price of the 8GB card will fall soon enough, with 12GB and 16GB card theoretically set to come, with the ability to actually add more storage space no bad thing at all, unlike with any iPod. In addition, the pricing is cheaper than the iPod nano, something that will definitely appeal to some. In comparison, the 4GB nano costs US $149 ($189 in Australia), with the 8GB nano at US $199 ($249 in Australia), while the 2GB nano doesn't exist as it was excluded from the third nano generation. So, how many songs, videos and photos can each Fuze store, what formats does it support, what is the rated battery life, and will anyone buy it? Please read onto page 2. |
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