With this in mind I took the easy option to solve this problem and went on the hunt for a new MP3 player so I could listen to my own music on the train to/from work (rather than the tinny crap from other passenger’s headphones). After some pondering Sadiq linked me to the Sandisk Sansa Fuze, which is just over £50 from Amazon, and with a free trial of Prime I had it rather quickly.

The device itself is flash based, and the version I got has 4GB of on-board memory, with a microSD card for additional storage. It’s simple USB mass storage for putting files on, so no more messing around with additional applications like I had to do with my old Creative Zen, and this also means that it works nicely without any drivers on any OS I care to throw it at. The battery life is fantastic, and manages to keep going for over 20 hours on a single charge before it finally gives in and demands more juice. The other nice thing about the Sansa is that the jog wheel used for controlling the device actually moves. I’ve never liked the lack of tactile feedback found on iPods, and this is a big plus for me in terms of providing tactile feedback.

So far I’ve not had many problems with it, although I’m not sure how well it supports SDHC, as the 8GB card I got doesn’t seem to work too well as the refresh of the internal library hangs when I use that. Admittedly the refresh is slow as it is with a 2GB SD card, but as it hadn’t finished after 30 minutes of waiting, I’m going to presume that it didn’t like the card. This is something I still need to investigate further, but for the time being I’m happy with 6GB of music.

The only other downside that I can think of is that it charges via USB, so either needs plugging into a computer, or the additional purchase of a 13A to USB adapter. Then again, this is common with the iPods these days I believe, so it’s hardly a big issue.

All in all I’m very happy with the Sansa, and would recommend it to anyone else after a small, cheap MP3 player.