I researched for at least two weeks before I made my decision. Of course a large part of the decision for me was the price-to-feature issue. After owning several brands and models over the years, I now have the SanDisk Sansa Fuze 8 GB Video MP3 Player. I've fallen in love with this little machine and it's packed with features. It's also very well put-together -- it's going to last me. It cost me all of $65 dollars and it has a huge following of users -- therefore, it also has lots of accessories too. I read lots of independent test results prior to selecting this (over the Sony). I actually owned the Sony and I have several thousands of dollars invested in Sony audio equipment -- they have a great sound that nobody can produce. But, I couldn't justify the cost of the Sony. I also don't like the feature Sony has built in to prevent you from listening to your own music -- my wife buys 99 cent music tracks off amazon and she can listen to it but if i use my music library software to copy the same song to my Sony MP3 (I use Mediamonkey), it won't let me listen to it because Sony says I'm violating the license -- which is NOT the case. I have the same problem with all of my Sony audio also but I'll never buy anything but Sony as audio systems go. Sound quality wise, the Sansa is great. Also, I can pull out and replace the SD card anytime I want or need to. I've got something around 400 tunes and videos and pictures and voice recordings on my Sansa 8GB and I haven't filled 50% percent of it yet. I haven't even started to touch my SD card! SanDisk Rocks! They ought to ... they're one of the originators of SD cards and are still tops!

On a final note ... I suggest that you do not buy any of the cheap one's out on the Internet right now. At the time of this writing there is a flood of sub $100 dollar players that previously (prior to Christmas 2009) were selling for over twice that price. Most of these do not support the higher capacity and faster plug-in cards (i.e. SDHC, miniSDHC, microSDHC). Yes you can purchase older SD cards that are very inexpensive, but they will not have the capacity and the higher access speeds that the newer players now accommodate.

Check it out at amazon.com

http://amazon.com

Now having said all that, I'd like to say that having looked at Matt's recorder over on the amazon site, there are two features on this Sony model that might make me want to pay the extra money (assuming I had it to spend). These two features alone might make me think twice since they do in fact pertain to us musicians and Band In A Box people. Recording (and playing back) your backing tracks from a WAV (versus MP3) might well be worth it!

Here's the two I'm referring to:

1 The PCM-M10 includes both digital pitch control & key control. Digital pitch control maintains pitch while slowing down or speeding up playback speed.
2 The PCM-M10 conforms to the USB 2.0 Mass Storage Class Device standard and this recorder's native recording file formats include .WAV and .MP3.

Last edited by ikeinblackriver; 03/23/10 12:19 AM.
Ike