Sandisk have been doing a good job of releasing portable music players that provide a good deal of flexibility. The Sansa is a budget 2GB model that may not play back video, and needs to be used with the custom USB cable, but otherwise does a good job of providing an alternative to the iPod flooded world of music players.

Unlike many other players, the Sansa is designed to be used when held tilted on its side --in landscape, if you will -- instead of the upright, portrait style of many other MP3 players we’re familiar with. As such the button placement can feel a little strange at first; with the navigation controls under your right thumb and the volume controls under your left index finger. There’s a hold switch and a record button underneath your left thumb, which unlike the other buttons, you have to reach for.

While the menu isn’t as intuitive as say, the iPod, the Sansa does let you use the internal memory as well as a MicroSD card for storage. There’s no proprietary software, which we love because you can choose to manage your music manually through Windows Explorer or let Windows Media Player do it for you. The Sansa plays back MP3, WAV, WMA and DRM-protected WMA files. It also displays all files and folders through Windows Explorer and acts as a removable drive, happily copying data without any fuss.

The sound is slightly better than an iPod, but you wouldn’t know this if you used the included earbuds as a reference. They are rubbish. There is no bass anywhere except for a whimper of a castrated kick-drum. Snare sounds are intrusive, out of place and distracting -- like a leisurely stroll brought to a sudden halt by an unseen street sign. Plug in a good pair of headphones, however (which you should do with any and every portable music player), and wonderful sounds spring forth.

The playlist function isn’t as polished as it should be. You can’t add a track to a playlist without playing it first, which interrupts your music. The only other gripe we have with the Sansa is that the menu colour scheme doesn’t seem to have been thought through. The background is light blue; and the black text options are set against a white bar with two small light blue arrows on either side. In sunlight you simply can’t see what you’ve selected. We found ourselves overcoming this obstacle by scrolling until the menu options changed; then moving one position in the opposite direction to select what we were after.

The included CD contains a PDF manual and photo converter, which resizes images to 120 x 80 pixels and copies them to the player if it’s plugged in, or to a local folder if it isn’t. You can resize pictures to the player’s native resolution yourself, save them as JPEGs and drop them in the Sansa’s photo folder if you’d prefer to do things manually. The quality of the screen itself is quite poor, so think of the Sansa’s ability to display photos as an incidental extra, and then take another look at the price.

At $50 less than a 2GB iPod Nano, the Sansa is good value, especially when you consider the battery is laughably easily to replace, the memory upgradeable and the player itself free of restrictions. The Sansa may not beat the iPod Nano in usability stakes, but as a versatile and utilitarian device it is streets ahead.

Although flash memory prices can vary greatly between stores, a current price estimate of a 2GB MicroSD card is $80. SanDisk have announced a 4GB card, however has yet to release it into the market.