SanDisk's latest addition to its portable media player line, the Sansa Fuze, fits cozily in between the dirt-cheap and diminutive Sansa Clip and the larger Sansa View in terms of both price and size. It's possible that the Fuze was introduced by SanDisk to round out its line, since the Sansa Connect, which was tightly integrated with the now-defunct Yahoo! Music, was recently discontinued. As it stands, none of the Sansa players, the Fuze included, do anything as innovative as the Connect, with its Wi-Fi access to Yahoo! Music accounts, but they all deliver quality, performance, and features at low prices.

The Fuze is a third-gen iPod nano competitor, and at 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB capacities (for $80, $100, and $130, respectively), it offers the same storage at much lower prices than the 4GB ($150) and 8GB ($200) nanos. (In fact, the 2GB screenless iPod shuffle costs only $10 less than 2GB Fuze.) The player may be weak in the area of file support—particularly with video—but it still offers the typical Sansa array of features, like a microSD slot, FM radio, and a voice recorder. In addition, its slim design and sensible controls make it worth a look.

Essentially a miniature version of the Sansa View, the Fuze has less storage and a smaller display, but the controls and menus vary only slightly. It's a good-looking little player that's only 0.3 inches thick, and it comes in pink, red, blue, black, and silver. The screen, at 1.9 inches, is tiny, but it displays sharp video. (Some effort is required to convert videos to play on the Fuze—more on that later.) The clickable control wheel is similar to the iPod's, with a central Enter button and scrolling/skipping functions achieved by pressing or winding the wheel. The Home button, separate from the wheel on the front face of the player, acts as a toggle between whatever screen you happen to be on and the main menu. This is a terrific feature, and it would be nice to see it on the iPod nano and classic. A handy microSD slot allows for memory expansion, and the proprietary connection on the bottom panel works with a USB cable for syncing and charging with your PC. The Power/Hold button is located on the right-hand panel.

The user interface will be familiar to fans of recent Sansa players. There are no real new features that differentiate this player from the Sansa View; they're simply reorganized under a few new icons. Navigation is an intuitive process of selecting appropriate icons and scrolling through menus—no surprises here. When a song is playing or the radio is in use, the song title or station name scrolls across the bottom of the main screen. The Now Playing screen displays album art (which could be bigger) and song duration. Music playback can be enhanced and tweaked to your personal taste using the 5-band customizable EQ under the Settings menu, but the included earbuds can't handle much bass boost before distorting. As always, I advise upgrading to some decent earphones. The Fuze supports MP3, WAV, Audible, and WMA files, in addition to protected files from services such as Rhapsody and Napster.

My main gripe with the Fuze is video file support. Although the official specs say it supports MPEG-4 and JPEG, which isn't much in the way of support, all visual files (even MPEG-4 or JPEG) need to be converted with the provided software. That said, I had no problem converting WMV, Xvid, or MPEG-4. Aspect ratios were nicely maintained, and the audio didn't seem to suffer. Is it a hassle to convert all of your videos in order to load them onto the player? Sure, but at least the end result is a video that closely resembles the source file. It isn't a pixelated mess with poor audio, which is sometimes the outcome with free video-conversion software. All photo files must be converted using the software as well.

The FM radio works well, with an impressive 40 presets and the ability to record at the press of two buttons. Recorded FM radio files are stored in the radio section. The voice recorder works the same way: It, too, has its own icon on the main menu, under which recordings are filed That's better than having all types of recordings lumped together. The recorded files can also be accessed on the music menu, where they are divided into FM and voice sections.

The Fuze supports Audible audiobook files and includes automatic bookmarking as a basic function, so you can easily pick up at the point where you stopped listening. The Audible files have their own section under the music menu, as do podcasts. I also like the delete feature offered in almost every section—you can manage your music, photos, and videos on the player itself rather than only in Windows Media Player.

SanDisk rates the battery life at an impressive 24 hours for audio and a more reasonable 5 hours for video. Our audio battery rundown tests yielded 21 hours, 22 minutes.

SanDisk excels at making easy-to-use, good-looking players, and the Fuze is no exception. It is, however, basically just a smaller Sansa View. If I had to choose between an 8GB Fuze and an 8GB View for $20 more, I would go with the View for its larger screen alone, but also because it doesn't require that all video and photo files be converted. If you want a tiny device with video capabilities, however, the Fuze should please. You'll need to use the included video conversion software to view anything you load on the player, but at least the process is fairly painless and the results are good. The Samsung T10 and the iPod nano are higher-priced competitors that look a little slicker, but if you're more interested in saving $50, the Fuze is a good alternative.

SanDisk offers a one-year warranty on the Fuze. For support, visit sandisk.com/sansa.

Compare the MP3 players mentioned above side by side.