What’s so great about iPods? For one, they have large storage, ranging from the small 512MB Shuffle, to the 60GB full-sized models that can hold thousands upon thousands of songs. What’s not so good is that most of the larger-storage models are hard-drive based. This means spinning parts, which isn’t too good in terms of battery longevity and durability. Bumps and jolts could damage the spinning parts, no matter how protected your iPod and iPod hard drive is.

That’s probably why the bloggers over at Anything but iPod are so excited about Sandisk’s SanSa 8 Gigabyte Flash-based player. Firstly, it’s not an iPod (which is exactly the point of the site, right?). And then it has a relatively large storage sans the moving hard drive. It’s like the iPod Nano, but double the storage size (compared to the 4-GB Nano).

From the SanSa official site,

The very attractive, sleek design includes a 1.8 TFT color screen with advanced navigational features and an easy to use interface. You can also avoid scratches and dents with the durable metal backing. The Sansa e200 provides superior sound playback and supports Microsoft PlaysForSure subscription music. The SanDisk Media Converter supports most image formats to enjoy photos and small personal videos.

While the official site only includes information about the 4-GB model, the top-of-the-line so far, the impending launch of the 8-GB model seems to have been confirmed.

A week or so ago we reported on the launch of an 8GB Sansa e200. This info was backed by leaked photos and IP address records in our forums. Even though SanDisk has not announced the e280 yet, they now have a photo of it on their website in an interactive 360 degree demo.

Scratch-resistant durable metal backing? Just what iPod Nano users have been wishing for. I want one!

[tags]scratch resistant ipod, sandisk, flash based music player[/tags]

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