SanDisk Cruzer Micro MP3 Companion - SDCZ4-000-A15
LCD

For the price and occasional use it can't be beat. To have your Cruzer flash drive double as an MP3 player on walks or trips is great. If you need the specs an iPod or other SanDisk MP3 player offer...go ahead and buy one. For just want an occasional music player, this is a great fit with the Cruzer.
 
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*Can pick one up for less then $50 (does not include any memory). The size is very compact-you can put it (the player, belt clip & headphones) in your dress shirt pocket easily.The display is well light & easy to read. The player uses the SanDisk Cruzer Micro line of flash drive units for memory. So, you can choose your memory size based on your budget. I emailed a question to support & had the answer within 24 hours. You don't have to load any software into your computer to use this player. *I use .wma files and the player hangs ups on me frequently. I have to remove the battery to get it to reset--the off button does nothing when it hangs up. I have loaded the newest firmware (version 1.1.0), formatted my 512mb flash drive to "fat" & recopied my .wma files @ 64kbps as suggest by SanDisk Support. The battery door does not appear to be attached very well--but, if it breaks within two years it's covered by the manufacturer's warranty. The unit came with absolutely no instructions on how to access the menu options for the player. The supplied headphones are not great but decent. If you want better sound, go buy a set of $10-15 Sony earbud headphones--the sound will be noticeably better. *Bottom line--This is only a great deal if you already have a Cruzer Micro flash drive because if you don't like the music you have loaded in the player, just change the flash drive unit. If you don't already have a Cruzer Micro flash drive & you want a flexible MP3 player, look @ Lexar's LDP-200 Digital Music Player-it uses a secured digital card for memory. I have one & it's great.
 
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I upgraded firmware to 1.1.0 right after I got it. Tested with 512MB Cruzer Micro. Sandisk doesn't have a User's Guide available yet, be prepared to figure out the menu options yourself. They are mostly straightforward. I didn't notice menu differences before/after the firmware update. * The power-on/off keyguard is manditory. You have to hold down Play for 4 seconds to turn on/off. Keyguard during operation is activated with a few clicks of the menu options. * The blue light on the Micro is on during access (at the start of each track, and mid-track on larger files). It caches the track into built-in memory to minimize the amount of time (and battery) spent reading the Micro. * It scrolls the filename, the ID3 title & artist during play. * It has 15 built-in Equalizer presets & a user-defined 5-step (50, 200, 1k, 3k, 14k) EQ. * I created a .wma file with Windows Media Encoder, it played fine. I got a couple of licensed .wma files from co-workers and they wouldn't play on my computer or on the Cruzer. Since I can't find specs or User's Manual I don't know what it's supposed to play. I made an .ogg with vorbis tools and it didn't even try to play it, but it didn't puke on the folder structure like it did with unplayable .wma files so I am guessing it doesn't look for .ogg files. See the folder navigation note below concerning unplayable files. * Navigating sub-folders involves clicking through the name of each separate folder one at a time, not navigating a tree. It seems to sort them properly but it doesn't show names of folders with no playable files in them. I sort some of my book-on-cd rips into folders like "disc 1, disc 2"... So I don't see the name of the folder those folders are in. When invalid files (licensed .wma in my case) were on the drive, it did not reliably play sub-folders automatically after playing the root files, it would just repeat the root folder files again. I had to choose the sub-folder manually. Deleting the unplayable .wma files fixed the problem. * FF takes about 9 seconds to FF 1 min. To really give the resume a good test, I loaded up a 24-bit mono .mp3 83.5 megs size (over 8 hrs long), & held down FF, checking that it would resume every 20 mins. At time display 59:59 it wrapped around to 0:00 but it was still playing in the right spot. So 71 mins looks like 11:00 on the display. It worked fine up to 1h 19min when I gave up. Note it was very frustrating when I accidentally bumped FF and track skipped instead of FF scanning. You would do well to split large mp3 files if you depend on resume, as removing the Micro during play or adding files from the PC causes resume back at start of track. I don't have a 2nd Micro to test resume between 2 cards.
 
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