Drop, charge, and lose the cords
CNET editors' review
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CNET editors' rating:
stars
Very good
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 04/18/2007
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Disney is the Apple of the children's portable entertainment market. Still, as with the iPod, others will not stand idly by and let the Mix Stick and Mix Max go unchallenged. Enter the SanDisk Sansa Shaker, the latest MP3 player aimed at getting your youngster into the digital audio game. And at $40 with a dead simple design, it's definitely up to the task.
The Sansa Shaker was designed with the little ones in mind and it shows. Its hourglass shape makes it perfect for small hands, and as it's about the size of a salt shaker (3 inches tall and 1.5 inches in diameter at the wide ends), it won't be a choking hazard. The player has no screen--just a few simple controls. There's a play/pause button on the front with an LED ring that lights up when the unit is powered on. You can shuttle through tracks by twisting a ring around the bottom of the Shaker and adjust volume via a similar ring around the top. SanDisk has taken young ears into account and implemented a volume limiter feature that defaults to a safe volume every time the earbuds are plugged in, no matter how far the external speaker is turned up.
About that speaker: its presence at the top of the Shaker definitely adds to its salt shaker-esque appearance. SanDisk also included two headphone jacks, which is always a nice touch in MP3 players aimed at youngsters. However, only one set of headphones is included with the player. A flap on the bottom of the unit conceals a standard mini USB port, a battery compartment (one AAA included), and an SD card slot. The Shaker has no built-in memory, but it does come with one 512MB card, which should be plenty for the younger set. You also might want to consider picking up a few 256MB cards (at $10 to $15 a pop) and loading each one with different content (one for sing-a-longs, one for audiobooks, and so on).
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Where to buy
SanDisk Sansa Shaker (512MB, pink):
$57.95
| store | price | in stock? | rating |
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Amazon.com Marketplace
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$57.95 | Yes |
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