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The iPod alternative for this holiday season: Sansa View vs. Zen Creative
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Usually around this time of year, the weekend newspaper is jammed packed with advertisements by the likes of Circuit City, Target, Best Buy, Wal-Mart and Sears wanting to sell you the next big thing in consumer gadgetry. This year may be slightly different though, Circuit City has filed for Chapter 11, Target’s third quarter numbers were down 24%, Best Buy wasn’t far off that mark, and Sears stock has dropped 80% from its peak – which leaves the Everything Store, the Anything Store, the Whatever Store, Wal-Mart to buy all the ad space.
Despite the prospect of seeing more Wal-Mart ads in a city sans Wal-Marts (or Target for that matter, Times Square), I am up to the task of sorting through them to help you decide what might be worth the money this holiday season. I am well versed in the iPod alternative, so we’ll start there.
I've had a few forays into the world of iPod, all failures. I never caught on with that crowd for one reason or another, but there are some cool things coming out for those looking for a healthy iPod alternative. For years (too many) I resisted the urge to upgrade my mp3 player. Instead, I rode out the Zen wave to its unfortunate end. First made by the company Creative, Zen was officially touted as a “picture viewer” though you could scarcely see anything under the gaze of 40+ watt light bulbs. The playback was simple and at 8GB it was enough to keep me satisfied. Luckily, though, Creative has made a number of improvements on the visual and ergonomic side of things.
This particular beauty of a media player touts itself as the first 32GB flash media player. It brings easy-to-use, easy-to-view music and video, it is radio and microphone ready, and of course, you can view pictures on it. (Honestly, who uses this function? You can’t actually take pictures with it, only view them.) For $180 you can walk away with a 16GB player and a three month subscription to Napster. It's got a wider screen, so if video is what you're after, this might be your ticket.
The second iPod alternative I’m going to digest for you is my personal favorite, the Sansa View made by San Disk. San Disk is a company who specializes in making flash memory cards – many other players and computers use SD, so they decided to join in on the fun. And recently, San Disk launched their idea of the next revolution in portable (yet still tangible) music, called slotMusic. Check it out here.
Bucks for bang-wise, you’ll not find a better deal; the Sansa View comes with 16GB of music and video space, microphone, radio, same as the Zen. But it is about $60 cheaper, and (here’s the real kicker) it is a partner with the music service Rhapsody (superior to Napster, in my humble opinion).
For those of you who don’t know, Rhapsody allows you to listen to unlimited music for $12.99 per month – it’s like iTunes, but for the price of a CVS CD, you can hear the entirety of every song in their catalog. Better yet, for $14.99 per month you can take the music with you on your Sansa View. This too is unlimited for the duration of your subscription.
And, just incase the slotMusic thing ever catches on, Sansa View is also compatible with the nickel-sized floppy disk music medium. I got my Sansa View for the rock bottom price of $89 on eBay - but remember, eBay can be a crapshoot. In my humble opinion Sansa View beats out the Creative Zen for best iPod alternative.
Please send any and all questions regarding Sansa View, the Zen machine and reasons for the late model's destruction. And please take the poll to see where you stand on the iPod v. iPod alternative.
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