SanDisk introduces world's first 8GB flash based MP3 player

August 22, 2006

While large hard drive based MP3 players have been around for many years now due to their low cost per Gigabyte, they have their drawbacks such as more tolerant to damage by shock, quite hungry on battery power and typically larger & much heavier than flash based MP3 players. Now, SanDisk has just announced the world's first 8GB flash player, the Sansa e280, bringing it to the point where one can store a bulk of their music collection or several hours of video. It can be upgraded to 10GB with a 2GB microSD card.

This 8GB Sansa e280 flash player is priced at $249.99 and is due to begin shipping in the first half of September. It features dimensions of 1.7" x 3.5" x 0.5" (4.3 x 8.9 x 1.3 cm), a 1.8" TFT colour display, Open DRM & Microsoft's PlaysForSure DRM formats, 20 hours of battery life, FM tuner, Thumbwheel for quick navigation and several accessories. For scratch resistance, it features a strong alloy metal back casing. The player requires a PC with at least Windows XP and Windows Media Player 10 to transfer content. With flash memory prices frequently falling, SanDisk has also reduced the pricing of its existing 2GB, 4GB and 6GB players to $139.99, $179.99 and $219.99 respectively.

In a move to expand its systems business, SanDisk Corp. unveiled what the company claims is the world's largest capacity, flash-based MP3 player. The flash-memory product company also cut the prices on its older MP3 player models.

Priced at $249.99, the new Sansa e280 is the latest MP3 player in SanDisk's flagship e200 series. The new 8-gigabyte (GB) device features a microSD expansion slot, allowing expansion to 10-GB of music '” or 2,500 songs '” with an optional SanDisk 2-GB microSD card.

Further details & specs. can be found at SanDisk here.

Until Apple comes out with larger iPod Nano models, the Sansa clearly takes the lead when it comes to flash MP3 players, however despite SanDisk's success in the flash memory market, taking on Apple is a totally different story in which most consumers see the iPod as the only thing capable of playing downloaded music. Unlike the iPod Nano series, the player does have a few useful features such as a removable battery, FM Tuner and video support. Although the Sansa series include video conversion software, it is unclear what the player's display resolution is, never mind which video codec's it is capable of handling natively without the software (if any).

Source: EETimes - Latest News