SanDisk Sansa Express review

Performance
Music can be dragged and dropped on to the player through Windows. Whether you put music on the expansion card, the internal memory or both, the Express builds a central database so you don't have to decide where to look for music. The player is compatible with Macs, so we could get our tunes on the device using OS X.

The player produces some excellent, skull-rumbling bass alongside well-defined mids and clear highs. The sound 'feels' like a Creative player, which we believe to be among the best-sounding players available. We pumped some tunes through Denon's terrific C700 earphones. Yeah Yeah, the dance track that makes Granny tremble with hysterical panic, explodes through the 'phones, bass pounding into our ear canals with the fury of a thousand imploding suns. Following this bass extravaganza, Glosoli by Sigur Ros lulled us into a dream-like trance with its crystal-clear ambiance, deep bass and emotional Icelandic falsetto vocals.

The FM radio seeks signals very quickly, and upon finding a strong signal reception is good. The voice recorder also works well -- the microphone is sensitive and recording quality is more than acceptable. There's no option to adjust the quality of the recording, but SanDisk has picked a decent bit rate. Recordings are outputted as WAV files and a minute-long recording gives a file of around 650KB in size.

Battery life is rated at 15 hours. Our monkeys are furiously slaving away in our labs checking for themselves. Pop back soon for their results. Also, the headphones are typical of bundled 'phones: rubbish. Some better-quality buds will give you a significantly improved sound.

Conclusion
The SanDisk Sansa Express is a really smart player, with nicely implemented features. The excellent sound quality and ease of use should please most people, and the snazzy design will appeal to teens and adults alike. With its native support for audio books and its low cost, it wouldn't surprise us to see commuters and business-folk using it to catch up on Harry Pot... sorry, Stephen King on their way to the office.

If you want something cheaper still, but crave that great audio quality, consider Creative's Zen Stone. At £25 it's a solid hit for the price-conscious music fan. Don't expect the same professionalism in the aesthetics though.

Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Nick Hide