Poor software and design choices cripple an otherwise economical device.

The first mp3 player that I bought on my own was a Sansa e200, a small but economical player that I've been using for almost 5 years. After that amount of time I figured it was time for an upgrade, and the attractive new generation of Sansa players seemed like a good choice. I couldn't complain about the price, either - especially once I expanded the memory with a micro SD card.

However, after using this player for a month I have to wonder what happened to the original player's design team. In place of easy to use buttons or a scroll wheel is a touch screen. The touch screen is extremely sensitive and even a light tap with any object (clothing, keys, etc) will change the song or stop it. The touchpad does not illuminate when pressed, making navigation difficult in low light due to the relatively small size for the number of touch-sensitive buttons.

Navigation is a chore because the menus change slowly - there is a noticeable half-second or more of lag between tapping the pad and the menu changing or scrolling, enough time to make you wonder whether you've actually hit the pad in the correct place. Scrolling through songs/artists/playlists and menus is therefore slow even at maximum swipe scrolling speed, and the fact that menus do NOT wrap around to the beginning means you need to scroll completely back through the list every time you need to access a previous option.

Lastly, the software itself seems to be pretty buggy - already I've had the player freeze a number of times. Sometimes it is random, other times when connecting to the computer or attempting to sync music.

Unfortunately I decided to stick it out with this player past the short return period, so I'm now making the best of it. It does have good battery life and compared to what I'd pay for an iPod holding the same number of songs it's a great deal. But poor design choices make this a player I'd avoid even at the low price I paid for it. If you've had a Sansa in the past and are hoping for an upgrade, this would NOT be it.

I'm getting ready to order another one for my wife.

Love this little player. Does everything I wanted and more, great sound quality even with the supplied ear buds, for me I don't see a reason to buy an expensive replacement set.
The photo and video quality is very good, downloading music and photos is very easy but did take me just little bit to figure out how to get the eBooks loaded properly.
The touch screen is a bit sensitive but no problem for me, I just find what I want (music playlist or book) then press the handy dandy lock button and no worries, one more click and unlock it to go back to the menu. The pause is great for eBooks, pause it shut it off, power it back on and it resumes from exactly where I left off.
Battery life is exceptional, haven't had to purchase a card yet, I have lots of music and photos and a coupe of videos and only load one book at a time, listen to it remove it and add another one.
I could go on and on about the FM radio, the voice recorder, the perfect size, connectivity to soundbar or car stereo, the price but I think you have gotten the idea of how much I like this jewel, haven't found a downside yet.

excelent buy for the money!!!

very pleased with this sandisk...you always wonder when you buy electronics off line if you will get a good product...in this case we couldn't have ask for better...its easy to use...a fairly nice size sceen...and the sound is great...great product!!!

great product..

Having bought an original Fuze for myself and one for my wife and having convinced two co-workers to buy the original Fuze, you could say I am a fan.

I wanted to buy my father one as a Christmas present and thought it would be nice to pre-load it with old time radio shows (my main use of the original Fuze). I thought that the new Fuze+ would be an improvement, but I was badly mistaken.

First off, the new Fuze+ does not have folders. If you have 1,000 episodes you have to scroll through all of them, as opposed to scrolling through folders that list them by show (i.e., if you have Jack Benny, Fred Allen, and Henry Morgan you do not see folders, but rather all of the individual files).

The start up is cruelly slow now.

The user interface is unwieldy and the buttons are overly sensitive. Yes, it looks more like an Apple product, but it does not work as well as a Sansa Fuze (original).

I expected there to be some issues in figuring out a new machine, but the problem with this one is that once you figure it out it is still inferior to the older model. Perhaps I am missing something and it is a wonderful player, but having read the directions (something I did not need to do on the original Fuze) I still found it awful to use.

Do yourself a favor and either wait until they have provided better software for this dog or buy something else...anything else.

I sent mine back and ordered an original Fuze, which is a brilliant product.

Not quite as bad as some of the reviews but the older model was better.

I lost the older Sanda Fuse and missed it so much that I purchased the new model despite the negative reviews. Well the touch keypad is not so bad if you download the latest firmware. The organization of music, and especially audio books is absolutely horrid. Even if you load a playlist, you never know what selection or chapter of a book is going to come up next. Using the Fuze+ is not at all intuitive. You must download and read the manual several times to understand the operation. Very frustrating to use. As one reviewer commented: "what happened to the old design team?". It would appear that the new team consists of the ones that graduated last in their class.