Sansa slotMusic Player

Unless you are a lot younger than I am, you will remember the days of the Sony Walkman and rushing out to the music store to pick up your favorite artist’s latest album on CD. Now fast forward a few years, and just about everyone in the modern world listens to their music in MP3 format and simply buys their music a-la-carte from their favorite online music site like iTunes, Rhapsody, etc.

Sansa has attempted to bring back the luster of physical music media by substituting microSD cards, that come preloaded with music on them, for conventional CDs. The Sansa slotMusic Player is the first MP3 player designed to exclusively use slotMusic music cards, and it is priced at an almost unbelievably low $20 MSRP. How much MP3 player can you get for $20? As it turns out, a lot more than you might think.

Design

For a $20 MP3 player, the Sansa slotMusic actually is a much more solidly built player than you would expect. The casing itself is plastic, but a solid metal strip outlines the player and gives it a heavy, durable feel that inspires more confidence than an entirely plastic covering would. The plastic covering actually forms a shell around the player, and the shells can be interchanged with custom-designed shells that feature various band logos and other designs.

At 2.84” W x 1.45” H x .6” D , the slotMusic player would fit into the category of medium sized MP3 players. Weighing in at 1.7 oz (without AAA battery), it reveals one drawback that it is slightly heavier than similar sized competing MP3 players.

Features

• No charging required – runs on one AAA battery
• No PC or Internet connection required to play music
• Simple controls
• Interchangeable shells
• Just add a slotMusic card and press ‘Play’
• Up to 15 hours of playback with one AAA battery

In the Box

Along with the slotMusic player, the package includes earbuds, a quick start guide and an alkaline AAA battery. SanDisk also includes a USB 2.0 microSD card reader with every slotMusic album, which can be used for adding additional songs to the slotMusic card or copying the preloaded music onto your PC. Each card only comes loaded with one full album of MP3 songs in 320kbps quality, which leaves about 800MB free for additional music.

Usage

After using and testing many other MP3 players that feature a myriad of features like FM radio, video playback, audiobook playback, multi-format capability and so on and so on, I found that the slotMusic player is extremely simple to use. There is no screen or any other display on the unit, and so there is no navigation menu to use for selecting specific songs, playlists or albums to play.

The controls available on the player are even less extensive than what you would find on a CD player. The control buttons are mounted on the side of the player and include Play/Pause, Forward and Back. A volume up/down control is mounted on the top of the player.

There is no power button and pressing the play/pause button effectively turns the player on and off. When the player is turned on, a small blue LED light is the only indication that the player is powered on. There is no internal memory, so you must have a slotMusic card inserted in order to listen to music.

Additional music could be added to the slotMusic card, but without an on-screen display to navigate to different songs on the player, I did not want to endure the pain of cycling through dozens of songs. This is one of the main drawbacks that I encountered - no easy way to organize or navigate through the songs on the player.