SanDisk declares war in the flash MP3 player market by offering twice as much storage capacity for the same price as Apple's nano 3G.
SanDisk today announced the new Sansa View, a sleek video enabled MP3 player with 16GB storage capacity. A significant step-up from the company's Sansa e200 music player series, the 8.8mm thin Sansa View features music, photos, FM radio and audio books. In addition, the Sansa View supports playback of H.264, WMV and MPEG4 encoded videos, which can be watched on a 2.4" (320x240 pixels) widescreen display. As for navigation, the Sansa View relies upon a backlit scroll wheel.
Set to compete with Apple's nano 3G, the Sansa View is slightly thicker (8.8mm vs. 6.5 mm) and offers a slightly bigger screen (2.4" vs. 2"). The Sansa View also claims slightly better battery life than Apple's nano 3G, and most notably SanDisk offers twice as much storage capacity for the same price. High storage capacity at low prices has always been an important factor for the success of the iPod, so it'll be interesting to follow the performance of the Sansa View.
For additional storage capacity, the Sansa View sports a microSDHC slot that supports cards up to 24GB. SanDisk's Sansa Media Converter will be available through a one-time software download, which transcodes numerous video files, including DivX. The MP3 player also supports music download and subscription services, including Rhapsody To Go, Napster, eMusic and others.
The Sansa View was first announced last January at CES, however, has since received numerous upgrades during the development phase. Still, the Sansa View is a MP3 player at its core, and should not be considered as a full-fledged portable media player. SanDisk claims a battery life of up to 35 hours for audio playback and up to 7 hours for video playback.
The Sansa View is expected to be available from retailers in the U.S. in early fall, with other regions to follow shortly thereafter. The Sansa View 8GB will retail for $150, and the Sansa View 16GB will retail for $200.
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