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Forget the iPod!!!
To all those who are looking for a great mp3 player, the Sansa Fuze line is the best! This is my second Fuze; my first one was the 4GB and I put a 4GB memory card in it, which gave it lots of room for everything I wanted to load into it...including a video and a slide show of my favorite pics! It was greatly admired by a friend so I cleaned out my stuff, added her music and pics, and gave it away as a gift, then bought myself this great 8GB Fuze! With the 8GB card I got for it, I've got 16GB of storage for a great price. One feature I like about it is the FM tuner...when I want more variety of music or want to listen to the news, I just switch to the radio! Easy to load music, whatever you can load into Windows Media (or any other music software you might be partial to) can be easily loaded into the Fuze...just drag and drop. I've worked with the iPod and iTunes before and the Sansa Fuze beats it all! Even the rubberized back of the Fuze is great, it can sit on my desk and not slide off and crash to the floor when I move around and forget about the earbuds in my ears! Also has a voice recorder, which I use for "memos to me" and shopping lists. The micro SD memory card slot lets you load content onto different cards and switch them around. The screen is bright, the thumbwheel is easy to use...who needs an iPod, I've got a FUZE!

Bomb Diggity Mp3 Player
Okay, it's not an iPod...but it is what it is. I bought this mp3 player on sale, so maybe that made it a great deal. However, it is usually priced much lower than the iPod and still retains many of the same features plus more!

Sansa made a wise decision when they included a MicroSD port as perhaps the best extra feature for their mp3 players. You can easily double or triple your data capacity and interchange cards that hold different movies or play lists. Does iPod offer that? NO, but probably in the future they will have something similar.

Other pluses include the radio tuner, so you can catch the news or emergency weather information. I thought the voice recorder option was pretty cool as well.

I'd say one of the drawbacks is the interface or software running on the Sansa mp3 players. They are fairly easy to use, and similar to iPod functionality, but I feel it could be better. With the ability of the Fuze, I think Sansa could have offered a better looking interface and perhaps the function of video games. However, there is the option of RockBox...

Looks are definitely not everything, Sansa mp3 players pack quite a punch for the size and price. For those of you that do care about looks, it has a very sleek designed case and the circular LED back light is pretty cool.

Solid but not Exceptional
This is the second Sansa MP3 player that I have gotten. I owned a previous model for about two years and liked it, so I decided to upgrade to a newer model.

The Fuze is very similiar in software format to the older model Sansa. It's thinner like an IPOD. This one has a little bit of a design flaw, more irritating than anything. The places where you plug in the power cord and the headphones are both on the bottom, which makes it hard to unplug the power cord without having to unplug the earphones because you can't quit get a grip on the power cord without unplugging the ear phones. On my previous Sansa MP3 player, the earphones port was on the top of the device, so you didn't run into this problem.

I also was not exceptionally happy with the battery life. After full charging, I don't think I get nearly as much life on a battery charge as my earlier pre-Fuze Sansa. But its still several hours worth of listening time, so you just have to charge it a bit more frequently.

The rotating wheel takes a bit of getting use to, as there is not much grip on the wheel, as there was in the earlier model Sansa. But that's not really a knock on the Fuze, as most MP3 players have gone to this kind of feel on the rotating wheel.

Other than that its very functional. FM radio comes in clear. Video from what I can tell is clear, although I have not used that feature much. I do like the computer interface through Rhapsody, which is new. It's easier to write and upload stuff to the Fuze than the earlier, more cumbersome software.

For about 20 dollars, you can add a memory card, which will double the memory all the way to 16 GB (or more, I suppose, if you get a bigger card). So, basically for under 100 dollars I got a 16 gig MP3 player, which is really about the best deal around.

Considering price and functionality, I'd give it 4 stars out of 5. It is not uber-sleek but it is solid.

Perfect
Player is amazing! It does everything I wanted and more. Extremely easy to use! I purchased this because it allows you to add music from your computer without having to pay a subscription! Thus, you can rip your own CDs and place them on your Fuze! PERFECT!

Pleasantly Surprised
I received this as a gift from my wife, and have been quite pleased with the use I have gotten out of it. It's pretty easy to download data off of a computer. When you plug it in, you can access your Sansa files using Windows Explorer. I use Windows Media Player to create and move my own playlists over, and have dragged individual mp3 files using Explorer. The Sansa installation CD throws the "Sansa Media Center" on your desktop, but I dont even bother with it.
The radio works as good as can be expected-I pick up my favorite local stations easily, even in places my cell phone doesnt work. The battery seems to last longer if you keep the display as dim as possible; its still easy to read on that setting.
I picked up the DLO brand "Action Jacket" for the Fuze. Its kind of a pain accessing the power switch through the opening in the foam, but the arm band is sturdy, and you can plug in headphones easily.
Drawbacks? The directions are useless-better to grab a beverage and just start playing with it. And because its not an "i-Something," its harder to find accessories.
But then again, why carry the same thing as everyone else?