Review: Sandisk Sansa M250 digital audio player

With the trio of Apple, Sony and Creative commanding such an enormous share of the digital audio player market, it's amazing that smaller manufacturers still continue to churn out their own take on the genre.

If these lesser-known devices are to have any chance of winning the battle for the customer pound, they need to offer something slightly different to their more established competitors.

While the Sandisk Sansa m250 offers good value, we're not convinced it's good enough to lure people away from an Ipod Nano or feature-packed Creative Muvo v200, for instance.

It's a 2GB player (a 1GB model is also available) that will play mp3, wma and Audible music files. It also boasts Microsoft's Plays For Sure logo, which means it will have no problem with music downloaded from Napster or any other site that uses DRM-encrypted wma files.

You also get a built-in microphone for voice recording and an impressive battery life that ran for around 11 hours on one AAA battery.

Once the accompanying USB lead is attached, transferring music is done within Windows Media Player or by simply dragging and dropping files into the player's directory,

It's very small (7.5cm long, 3.5cm wide), lighter than an Ipod Nano and comes with a carry case and armband.

Music quality is good too - easily comparable to bigger-name offerings. The menu system is intuitive and sorts by artist, song or album based on ID3 tags, but it's nowhere near as slick as its competitors.

There's no scroll mechanism for fast track navigation, for example.

Downsides include the small screen, which can't always display the amount of information required, and the achingly slow scroll speed.

It also lacks an automatic pause feature if the headphones are accidentally unplugged and, while our American friends can revel in the joy of FM radio, the tuner feature is disabled here in Europe.

The supplied headphones are atrocious too and the plastic casing feels very breakable.

In all, it's a nifty little player that offers good value for money, but it lacks certain features and is just not as aesthetically appealing as many other players.