SanDisk Digital Audio Player (1GB, silver)

Pros: Small size, fast transfer to the player, readable display

Cons: Bit of work to get tracks to play in sequence; V2 has fewer features than V1, and is not advertized as such (deceptive)

Summary: I bought this for mainly audio book use. The major problem is that it plays stuff in random order, or so it seems. After much futzing around, I discovered that if you make the title have a number in the beginning, it will play in that numeric order. So, if you name things like 01-title, 02-title etc., it will actually play in that order. Bit of a pain, but workable. I wish the documentation came out and said this up front. I have seen all theories like loading one file at a time, etc., stated on this forum. You don't need to; you can download in mass, as long as you have this numbering scheme. (caution, maybe this only applies to units with V2 firmware, see below).

"Resume" feature (a must for audio books) works fine most of the times. Sometimes, it tends to forget where you left off; I can't tell exactly when it screws up, seems to be random. But, it works 99% of the time, so I have not bothered investigating further.

Sound quality seems fine to me, but that is not the major concern for audio books anyway. I did try some music on it, and it seemed fine, within the limits of the headphone that I was using (just a Sony street headphone, nothing of audiophile quality).

Now for my major gripe: the newer ones are V2 versions. The documentation, firmware update, etc., available on the Sandisk web site is for the V1 version. CAUTION: DO NOT USE THE FIRMWARE UPDATE AVAILABLE ON THE SANDISK SITE; ACCORDING TO SANDISK, THIS CAN ACTUALLY DAMAGE YOUR UNIT! Too bad the website did not say that, and I had to go round and round with their tech support before I got this answer. Fortunately, I had enough sense not to just try that firmware, since my unit had a 2.x firmware version designation, whereas the one on the site is 1.02.

The V2 seems to have fewer features than V1 (some "upgrade"!) For example, the V1 version has a menu where you can set playback speed, and fast forward/rewind speed from something like 0.5x to 2x normal speed (iirc). However, this feature is COMPLETELY missing from V2. Sandisk says they have no plans to restore this feature.

Now, maybe the V1 version had more features, but less audio quality, than the new V2; they sacrificed some features for quality, maybe. If so, it would be nice if Sandisk admitted this on the web site. It is the deceptive hush-hush nature of the switch that I don't get. Why do it, Sandisk? You have a web site; update it with the latest information, won't you? And, please train your support staff to give this answer immediately. I had to play 20 questions to get the right info.

So, overall, I would say

9 for size
8 for battery life
9 for display
3 for usability/menu system
3 for not using the "track number" ID tag to play tracks in order, instead forcing you to change the title to numeric.
6 for having a resume feature, though quirky.
1 for dropping features on the latest version with no explanation.

I guess that makes it a 6 overall! (Not scientific, but close enough). Hope this helps somebody.