Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

And here we have the brown Zune stacked agains the Zen Vision:M, iPods 5G and nano, and the Sansa E200 series. Just because it’s taller than the rest doesn’t mean it’s larger than the rest though; we actually found the Zune to be deceptively small, and still quite pocketable. But hey, that’s just us, we’re the peeps prepped and ready to rock a Universal in tight jeans.

P.S. -In case you’re wondering, the screens only “lit” on the Zune because it’s a non-functional retail display unit.

[Thanks, Steven]

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

While Creative and Apple may have settled their legal battles, they’re continuing to duke it out in the ring of portable media players. According to epiZENter‘s “reliable source,” Creative wants to introduce a new contender with an 8GB version of its Zen V Plus, to compete with the newly-supersized 8GB iPod nano. We’re all for competition in the marketplace, but Creative is going to have to move pretty fast if it wants to get its players out in time for the holiday shopping craze. Anonymous source or not, it’s well within the realm of possibility that Creative would want to go toe to toe with Apple — but of course, both Apple and Creative will have to take on the SanDisk Sansa e280 in the maxed-out flash-based DAP department.

[Via DAPReview]

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Peripherals, Portable Audio

If you’ve settled on picking up a SanDisk Sansa e200 or c200 but feel a bit left in the cold in terms of specialized accessories, Altec Lansing is rushing in to heat things up. In what appears to be a spinoff of the “Made for iPod” agenda, Altec Lansing has partnered with SanDisk to create a lineup of accessories geared specifically towards the Sansa music players. The flagship device — dubbed the inMotion iM510 — is a black docking speaker station that doesn’t veer too far from the company’s iPod-friendly versions, save for its Sansa compatibility, of course. While details thus far are a bit slim, we do know the portable system will dock, sync, and charge the e200 and c200 series DAPs, and will play nice with the (optional) BB2001 subwoofer. Although no word on pricing nor availability has been given, the coinage should be a tad lower (we’d guess, um, 10 percent or so) than the iPod-conforming units when it hits the street.

[Via MobileWhack]

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Filed under: Portable Audio

Just a few days back, Sansa-manufacturer SanDisk was shot down by Sisvel and forced to take down its displays at Berlin’s IFA expo, but it seems that some fast-acting (and talking) lawyers have somehow reversed the decision just in time for SanDisk to show their products on the final day of the show. Tangled in lawsuits concerning MP3 patent violations, the company still insists its playback technology isn’t infringing on any patents, but Sisvel maintains its insistence that SanDisk should be included in the nearly 600 companies that pay royalties to the licensing firm. Apparently SanDisk wasn’t the only company forced to put its show on hiatus, as 19 other outfits had products unexpectedly seized for “similar violations.” Sisvel isn’t going down without a fight, however, as it has already filed an appeal to have the reversed order un-reversed — while it may seem a bit redundant (to say the least), it’s certainly not out of character for the sue-happy Sisvel, who proudly joins the growing list of “you’ve got to be kidding me” lawsuits.

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Filed under: Portable Audio

You’re doing your damnedest to position your MP3 players as the top alternative to the iPod, so what do you do? Well, if you’re SanDisk you counter Apple’s “Made for iPod” licensed accessories program with your very own “Made for Sansa” licensed accessories program, right? SanDisk is launching the program with about 40 different products, including speaker docks, travel cases, headphones, armbands, FM auto transmitters, chargers and cables, from many of the same companies (Altec Lansing, DLO, Griffin, HandStands, Macally, Maximo Products, and Speck Products) who are already making iPod accessories. It’s a smart move on SanDisk’s part — the massive ecosystem of accessories is one way that the iPod maintains its dominance over the market — and presumably they aren’t asking for a licensing fee of 10% of the wholesale cost of each accessory like Apple does with the Made for iPod program.

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Hot off the floors of IFA is the V-Mate memory card recorder from SanDisk. This device is really pretty simple and could be really practical for people who love getting their video fix on portable media players like the iPod, PSP, etc. The V-Mate connects to any analog video and audio output. It can then record video directly to a wide variety of portable media formats like SD, MMC, and all of the Sony varieties. It records the video at 640 x 480, therefore being perfect for any of the portable media players out there. The TV-based interface allows you to control and adjust all features of the V-Mate. This device will be available in October for $130 or so. – Travis Hudson

IFA 2006: SanDisk V-Mate memory card recorder [TechDigest]

Filed under: Portable Audio

SanDisk is kicking out a successor to their aggressively-priced c100 line of flash-based players. The c200 won’t be out until October, but you’re looking at a 1GB model (the c240) that’ll sell for $80 and a 2GB model (the c250) that’ll go for $100. Both will support playback of MP3, WMA, and WMA DRM files (that includes PlaysForSure compatibility), and sport an FM tuner, integated voice recorder, a microSD memory card for adding up to 2GB of additional storage capacity, a 1.4-inch, 128 x 98 pixel LCD screen, and a battery life of about 15 hours.

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Filed under: Digital Cameras

Professional and semi-professional photographers are like a Top Gun-era Tom Cruise—cocky and in The Need, The Need For Speed. That’s why SanDisk’s Extreme IV CompactFlash cars are touted as the “fastest cards in the world” at a read/write speed of 40MB/sec. Very speedy compared to the no-name brands the weekend point-and-shoot crowd prefer.

To allow quick reads for dumping pics into the computer, something the crappy 53-in-1 card readers fail at, SanDisk is releasing its Extreme FireWire reader at the same time. Firewire 800 connections will be able to hit the 40MB/sec, and the Firewire 400s will make do at 20MB/s.

The cards will cost around $200, $400, and $700 dollars for the 2GB, 4GB and 8GB cards, respectively. – Jason Chen

Press Release [SanDisk via Trusted Reviews]

Filed under: Storage

With Toshiba and Panasonic having already unveiled their respective 4GB SDHC cards, you didn’t really think that industry powerhouse SanDisk would be too far behind, did you? For the uninitiated, SDHC (or SD 2.0, as it’s also known) is a new FAT32-compliant format designed for capacities up to 32GB, with cards that look exactly like regular SD models, but that won’t work in any but the newest of digital devices. SanDisk’s offering — available sometime before the end of the month — is rated as a Class 2 card, meaning that it guarantees a minimum transfer rate of 2MB per second. The $200 pricetag also gets you a “free” MicroMate card reader, which is not only handy but vital to making the most out of your new card, as the SD readers you currently own won’t have any idea what to do with this thing.

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Filed under: Portable Audio

So it’s starting to look like those leaked pictures we saw last month supposedly depicting an unannounced 8GB flash player from SanDisk are the real deal. You’ll recall that an Anything But iPod forum member claiming to be a SanDisk tester posted a shot of what’s generally referred to as the Sansa e280, and now the eagle-eyed editors over at ABi have discovered even more tantalizing clues on the company’s website. The most telling bit of evidence comes when you launch the 360-degree demos for either the 4GB e260 or 2GB e250, which instead of featuring the players’ respective capacities on the backside, show a model clearly adorned with an “8GB”  label — see the screenshot, right. Furthermore, the entire Sansa lineup is being hit with price cuts, which could be an indication that a product launch is imminent. If SanDisk is in fact able to get this model to market before Apple breaks us off with an 8GB nano — aluminum enclosure and all — it would seem to do more for the company’s market share than a negative advertising campaign ever could.

[Via Anything But iPod]

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

You didn’t really think that just because the Computex trade show is going on halfway around the world, we wouldn’t send a crack team of reporters to cover the event, did you? While our US staff neglected to renew their passports in time for their flights, the folks over at Engadget Chinese (traditional or simplified, your choice) were just a hop, skip, and jump away from Taipei, Taiwan, so they’ve graciously stepped up to the plate and provided the coverage necessary to make us feel that we’re right in the thick of it. They’ve already posted a number of booth tours of your favorite companies, like Intel (who’ve apparently rented out an absolutely mind-boggling swath of hall), Sandisk, Toshiba, and, um, A Data, with the latter company’s tour proving that our Asian colleagues have the same unhealthy obsession with cartoon-inspired gadgets as we do. Don’t worry, we’ll keep you apprised of the highlights from this year’s show, but for the full in-your-face Computex experience, chinese.engadget.com is the place to be.

Read- Intel
Read- Sandisk
Read- Toshiba
Read- A Data

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Filed under: Portable Audio

You already know how we feel about SanDisk's new 4GB Sansa e260, but apparently SanDisk isn't averse to a little help on the firmware side of things. They've just pinged the Rockbox community for a port of the open source Rockbox firmware to the e200 series, which at least should give them some serious nerd cred in a time when most everyone else is locking down their hardware. Rockbox has been ported to plenty of music players over the years -- including quite similar iPod hardware to that of the Sansa -- and its codec support, gapless playback, equalizer and numerous plugins make it an often preferable option to standard firmware. So there a lots of opportunities, but so far there's no word on if or how SanDisk is going to aid Rockbox in this endeavor, or if they have any plans for the Rockbox firmware other than as a nerdy alternative to theirs.

Filed under: Portable Audio

In a viral marketing move that’s sure to draw the fire of Apple fanboys enthusiasts (probably right here in the comments, if history is any indication), SanDisk has posted a website called “iDon’t” that encourages people to flee the closed iPod universe (the “iTatorship,” they call it) — and to pick up a SanDisk Sansa e200 while they’re at it. While we certainly won’t go into the pros and cons of each company’s products here (mainly for fear of getting flamed), we must say that the iDon’t site features little compelling content other than a few cheesy wallpaper downloads and some links to anti-iPod sites, and mostly comes across as sour grapes from the runner-up in an industry being dominated by a single player. Still, other manufacturers need to do something in order to gain market share, and R&D is, like, really expensive, so if you can convince a couple of kids to sport t-shirts and buddy icons featuring your propaganda, who knows, maybe a few consumers will bite.

[Via iLounge forums]

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Filed under: Digital Cameras, Gaming, Storage

If you want something done right, you’d better do it yourself. That’s SanDisk’s thinking anyways, with their new RapidGX Memory Stick PRO Duo cards they’re showing at E3. The cards do the usual Memory Stick PRO Duo thing, namely providing music, movies and other content for PSP owners, but they include a bit of SanDisk special sauce performance enhancements to speed file transfers up to 15MB per second, double the normal rates for PRO Duo cards. Seems like they just got tired of Sony’s limitations in the Memory Stick tech, and figured a way to improve it themselves. The 1GB card is all that’s available right now, and it retails for $85. The price — for a limited time only — includes for free SanDisk’s new MicroMate high-speed card reader to help the RapidGX hit its maximum speeds, and also includes PSP loader software to maximize space and convert files.

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Filed under: Peripherals

Philips has been peddling its SmartMX contactless payment system for a while, but things are really looking up now that SanDisk wants to get in the game. They’re now working with Philips to include the SmartMX tech in their TrustedFlash microSD cards, allowing any phone with a microSD slot to make payments. The details are a bit slim, but it looks like you would have to buy TrustedFlash cards loaded with “credits” in order to make payments, which frankly doesn’t sound like much of a step towards convenience for consumers, but rather a boon to SanDisk and Philips who will no doubt be taking a cut. However it works out, the industry is clearly marching towards contactless and phone-based payments, let’s just hope it works out as an actual plus for the people who are carrying around the phones and making the contactless payments.

[Via Gadget Review]

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Filed under: Portable Audio

Last month we wrote about a CNET study that quietly laid claim to PlaysForSure DRM cutting player battery life by as much as 25%, and FairPlay draining iPod batteries by up to 8%. DAPreview put it to the test, though, by comparing playback time on 25 albums in 160KBps non-DRMed and DRMed WMA in sequence on a fully charged SanDisk Sansa e260 with volume at 50%, screen brightness at low, and the backlight left on. And wouldn't you know it, the DRMed files played all of 25 minutes less, or 2.8% less than the 14:55 pulled from the non-DRMed music. However, since the test was only run on a single device, this only means you can conclude that the Sansa e260 handles DRM well; with so many chipset designs for player internals, you couldn't expect all devices to produce the same positive results. But hey, it's encouraging, if nothing else -- especially if you're a Sansa e260 user.

Filed under: Cellphones, CES, Displays, Gaming, Home Entertainment, Interviews, Media PCs, Podcasts