Sansa Fuze MP3 and Video player: big budget features at low budget price

Late last year, I had to go into hospital for a very scary operation. Naturally I met this challenge with my usual Zen acceptance and calm demeanor or, as Wulfette likes to tell it, I was too petrified to move. For whatever reason, she took pity on me. She did not want to leave me at the mercy of hospital TV, and things that go beep in the night, so she bought me a Black Sansa Fuze BH0811BJKK 4GB music and video player from Amazon.com for about $40. It was probably on special since the 8GB version was already available. Unfortunately, about a bazillion other people thought this was a good price too, what with Christmas being so close and all, and so my "emergency" player was back ordered for a few days. It arrived the day I got home. Luckily, as you may have already surmised, I managed to survive without it.

After a few days, once the amazement at still being alive had sunk in, I decided to open the package and see what I missed. I was forbidden to lift anything heavy for the next three months, but luckily the 3" x 2" x 1/4" Fuze did not weigh much more than a golf-ball-sized pre-op antibiotic.

Since I had not previously owned a music player, I spent the first few minutes staring at the outside of the unit. It's shiny black box and smooth rounded corners are very attractive and feel quite solid and hard. It is possible that heavy doses of painkillers influenced this fascination. The Fuze is also available in red, blue, silver and little-brother repelling pink.

The top half of the front of the unit is completely dedicated to the 1-3/4" x 1-1/4" LCD screen. The lower half of the front is mostly occupied by a large round... er... button, for want of a better description. Tiny white hieroglyphics mark the case at the 12 noon, 3, 6 and 9 o'clock positions -- that would be North, East, South and West for those of you with digital watches. A small button with another cryptic marking sits near the 2 o'clock (North-East) position. None of these markings made any particular sense to me at the time. I might attribute that to my medicated state, which had left me with the reasoning power of a rather slow squirrel. However, even today after months of successful use, I still don't know what these marks were meant to mean. The only other marking on the front is the word Sansa, right below the TV screen.

The left hand side of the unit has some kind of connector marked with the words, Micro and Mic. It seems likely this is for the microphone and to connect additional memory (microSD or SDHC).

The right hand side has a single sliding recessed switch, marked with the traditional power-on circle, and the word Hold. Sliding this switch up and holding it for a few seconds activates the unit. Sliding it down locks the other controls, so that you cannot accidentally reprogram it while carrying it in a pocket. Sliding the switch up again unlocks everything.

The bottom of the unit has two connectors, one on the left for a UCB connection, and one on the right for the standard stereo mini-jack of the headphones.

The top of the unit has no switches or connectors: it's as bare as a cheerleader in a centerfold. The back too has no connectors, bearing only the make and model number, the maker's name, SanDisk, and the almost ubiquitous, "Made in China". In a broad band across the back are numerous symbols, possibly the mystic runes that make it work, although it is more likely that they are the symbols for the various features its supports. Perhaps I would recognize these if I were young enough to have facial piercing or blue teeth.

The unit has no obvious ways to open it, other than a 5lb mini-sledge. Whatever is inside in the way of memory card and/or battery is not going to be easy to change.

Once I had finished staring at the unit itself, I turned my attention to the rest of the container. There was a small soft faux-suede carrying sleeve, which is probably a good idea since word on the web is that the screen scratches easily. It also contained a set of ultra-cheap head buds which I never used. They are probably suitable as a Christmas/Hanukah present to relatives you don't like. There was also a 3' long USB cord -- one end goes to the unit (non-standard plug), the other to any standard 2.0 USB port on your computer. The final enclosure was a small instruction booklet which was mostly pictures/diagrams. The content is brief, but to the point. It should be adequate to get any new user up and running.

The Sansa Fuze also comes with a 30 day trial to Rhapsody, the music service that lets you listen to millions of songs without paying per track. For more details about Rhapsody visit http://www.rhapsody.com/sansafuze  

Before I could progress any further with my exploration of this device, it was necessary to charge the battery. It will charge up through the USB port on your computer. Rumor has it that this is quite slow, but since Wulfette has other devices, she also bought a USB device charger which had this unit ready to go in less than 20 minutes.

As soon as you switch it on, the LCD screens lights up with very bright, clear, easy to read graphics. The screen switches itself off after a few seconds without any activity. This is a great way to save power, but it gets annoying fast when you are trying to review it @#!!@&&!

Now it turns out that the little button on the front simply takes you up/down the top level of menus. All the other selection functions are done via the big button. What exactly the button does depends somewhat on what part of the menu system you are in. Pushing at the top tends to stop and start selections. Pushing at the bottom brings up the current menu. Pushing to the right tends to take you deeper into a menu. Pushing at the left tends to bring you back out again. This is not always as intuitive as it could be, but after mucking around for a while, you can usually find what you want. Pressing the big button in the middle will bring up the screen if it has gone black. It is also how you make selections from menus and playlists. It also sometimes switches between options that are not visible. For example, pressing it on the main music-playing screen brings up the volume control. This was very hard to find. I spent the first two days listening to Journey and Led Zeppelin at front-row Madison Garden volume levels before I learned how to turn it down. It was great!

Perhaps because this was the first time I had encountered this type controller, but by far the least intuitive way to use this big button was for scrolling. To do it you simply move your finger around the disk in a circular manner. It sounds so easy once you know, but as one who is incredibly mouse-friendly, this took forever to occur to me. I finally did it by accident, and then it dawned on me what I had done. I can't exactly fault this unit for this, since I am sure that every youngster knows how to do it by the time they get their first tattoo.

Once you have finished fighting with the control button, many things are possible. Pressing the small button will bring up the top level of menu. You can choose between Music, Videos, Photos, FM Radio, Voice and Settings.

Music allows you browse through your music by Artist, Album, Song or Genre. You can set up goto lists (playlists) as well as rate and review songs. Since my mind is still stuck in the CD generation, I tend to just play albums, and have yet to play with all the features.

The Photos menu allows you to view photos stored on your unit. You can set up libraries by name. You can select photos from the libraries by scrolling through, or by viewing thumbnails. You can listen to music/radio while viewing photos. This is a nice way to carry a few photos of the girlfriend, wife, kids, pets or bright red Shelby Mustang Convertible around.

Videos can be selected alphabetically or based on your rating. You can set up bookmarks within a video.

The FM Radio has excellent reception, is easy to tune, and can be set up with 40 preset channels. A tummy full of steel staples did not noticeably improve or degrade reception. (I bet none of the other reviewers knew that!)

The Voice menu allows you to make and replay multiple recordings. The unit has a built in microphone which makes an exceptionally clear and audible recording of my voice. This would be excellent for making audio notes. I wish I had had this when I was a student.

The Settings menu allows you to customize Music, Audiobook, Video, Photo, Radio and System settings. I have not changed anything in here yet, since it comes set up perfectly for use in USA.

The Sansa Fuze comes preloaded with music, photos and a video, so you can futz about with everything before you try to use it.

Transferring music to you Fuze is easy. First you use the cord to connect it to your PC. Once you do, it comes up as a device, like a new hard drive would. It allows you to synchronize media automatically using Windows Media Player or Real Player. Since I have a lot more stuff on my PC than I want on my Fuze, I chose option 3, Take No Action when asked.

Now you can transfer music between the Fuze and your PC in either direction simply by dragging and dropping using Windows Explorer, My Computer, or whatever. I usually populate mine by using the software that came with my PC to encode CDs from my collection as MP3s or whatever. I usually use WMA format since it gets slightly higher quality than an MP3 of the same size. Music downloaded from the Internet would be fine too. The Fuze seems to recognize just about every current format (MP3, OGG, FLAC, WMA, secure WMA, WAV, Audible, and MPEG4). Two things that you cannot do are play the Fuze while it is attached to the PC, and listen to music stored on the Fuze from the PC without transferring it first. This seems odd, but since I already have all the music on my PC, it is quite workable.

Wulfette tested in on her Mac. She had no problems loading up a couple of albums either. I asked her how it was and she said, "It's a Mac. Of course it was easy." She delivered those lines with all the smugness that you would expect from a recovering Microsoft addict, and Vista refugee.

I think that photos and videos are drag and drop too and are equally easy to use, but I cannot say for sure. First you must download the Sansa Media Converter from www.sansa.com/downloads. I have not got round to that yet.

Mostly I use mine to listen to music. I use a 20-year-old pair of lightweight headphones that I used to plug into my Soundblaster Pro back in Windows 3.1 days, long before USB came about. If I remember rightly, they cost more than the Sansa Fuze. The sound is fabulous. I sampled my CDs as WMA at slightly above normal settings. The sound through the headphones is crystal clear and sharp as a bell. The screen displays sharp, easily readable (even without my glasses) menus. The preloaded photos and videos look clear and the color representation is superb. I doubt I will ever use it for anything other than music, but it is nice to know I have the ability.

My unit is the 4GB version, which should hold about 1000 songs, provided you do not load it up with a lot of photos or space-eating videos. The unit claims to have a 24 hour battery life for music, or up to 5 hours of video. I have never tested it, but I have no reason to doubt it. Since its first charge, the time spent attached to my PC for music loads has been enough to keep it fully charged. It is sturdy, efficient, easy-to-use (after a bit of practice), solidly made, and has exceptional sound and picture quality. For the price, I could not recommend it any higher.

It is, of course, almost totally useless unless you have a PC/Mac with a USB port. It works fine with Mac Leopard and Windows XP systems. I no longer have a Win 98 system available, but for speed and MP3 format reasons alone, I doubt it would be compatible. I suppose it will work as well with Vista as anything does. LOL!

Sanza markets a car charging/transmission accessory that allow you to listen to your Fuze over your car FM while keeping the unit fully charged. The Fuze does not come with a wall charging unit, although it worked no problem with the third party unit we bought separately.  The battery and memory card are integral to the unit. To my mind, this is the biggest down side. Once they go, the unit is destined for the tech landfill. The ear buds supplied are adequate, but the sound quality of the unit deserves something better. The video capabilities are nice, but since videos use so much space, if you plan to use it for this, the 8GB unit would be a better choice. It is very small, but not tiny, and it does not come with a clip to attach it to clothing. For use while exercising, a smaller unit like the Sansa Clip might be a better choice.