Image Courtesy: SanDisk

Forget Sony, Apple, Rio and the rest of the standard MP3 player manufacturers, it’s time to welcome yet another contender in the portable audio player market: SanDisk. When you generally talk about SanDisk, there’s hardly a mention of their MP3 players, but they may have just the thing you might be looking for.

SanDisk’s Digital Audio Player comes in three colors – red, blue and silver; it’s based on very versatile flash memory, which will prove to be rugged for the athletes that prefer to listen to music while exercising. For exercising and the like, flash players are a much better option than hard drive players, since flash players doesn’t not have moving mechanical parts. As the image depicts, the Digital Audio Player utilizes a much similar design to what Samsung has adopted. However, that’s not something we should be surprised about. Apparently, the latest trend in consumer electronics is "adopting" a design and varying it enough to make it unique. The flash player is equipped with three buttons with a single joystick along with an easy to navigate menu, according to SanDisk.

The portable audio player is capable of playing standard MP3 format as well as WMA and DRM protected WMA audio formats. Furthermore, it also has the capability to do voice recording, capture FM signals and switch back and forth between an audio player and a USB storage device.

The FM tuner features 20 preset stations with up to 15 hours of battery life with a single AAA battery, which is not bad at all. Moreover, the player has an Indigo backlit multi-line LCD display to lighten up the screen during dull hours.

The specific colors corresponds with the aforementioned color choices – red (256MB), blue (512MB) and silver (1GB).

The package includes the digital audio player, carrying case with armband, stereo earphones, AAA battery, USB 2.0 cable, quick start guide, driver CD with Musicmatch Jukebox software.

The 256MB version costs anywhere from $53.00-$85.00, the 512MB edition costs anywhere from $77.00-$114.00 and the 1GB version retails anywhere from $109.00-$169.00.