I am pleased with the size of the unit - and it's capacity. (I fill it with WMA's.) It's very easy to load the player up with songs. Plug in the USB cable, and it's just drag & drop. The sound is great - but I don't use the included headphones which made my ears hurt & kept falling out.

I do not think that the controls are very user friendly. The various menus are hard to navigate.

The FM radio is good, but I have yet to figure out how to add the pre-set channels.

It ran for a long time off of the included AAA battery - 2nd battery, not lasting as long.

An occasional glitch makes the unit hang up when I turn it on. Re-inserting the battery corrects this. I am not interested in doing the firmware upgrade, as several people have mentioned that after upgrading, that the unit crashed. It's hard to get the battery out when the case is on, and it's a pain to take the case off.

I was really surprised at the construction of the unit - all plastic. Without a battery, it weighs about the same as a two ply kleenex. Even with the included plastic case, I am afraid of breaking it.

I wanted an under-$100 MP3 player mostly for listening to audio (podcasts, public radio FM broadcasts), so although I am a Mac user I didn't seriously consider the iPod Shuffle. All the specs and reviews of the SanDisk looked promising. Based on my experience, I'd second the positive comments of previous reviewers, adding only a couple of caveats:

* The first one I received from Amazon had a hardware defect. The FM tuner worked once and then stopped working, and the LCD screen sometimes wouldn't come on when the unit was powered up. (I upgraded the firmware, tried fresh batteries, no help.) So I had to return it (kudos to Amazon for shipping a replacement right away). The second one I got is fine, so it's probably a statistical quality-control issue. If I'm the only one who got a bad one, it's not a big deal. But I would highly advise you test all of the functions listed in the owner's manual to be sure they all work.

* The FM receiver is not a miracle worker. I was hoping to be able to listen to a public FM station with a fairly wimpy signal. It's only borderline possible, because the signal fades unless the SanDisk is pointed just right. But realistically, no inexpensive FM tuner in such a small physical case is going to pull in weak stations the way a desktop radio with an antenna would. Sound quality on the strong, commercial FM stations is just fine.

Despite the caveats, I'm pleased with the value I got for the cost.

(Re: complaints in other reviews about too-slow fast forwarding: it is possible to increase it to a 10x rate in the System menu from a default of 8x, though maybe that's still too slow for some people.)

It's great out of the box. You can use it with minimal studying. Loading files is easy.

My only complaint is that for some reason the files play out of order, and the player is not set to shuffle.

I've had the sandisk for a month now. I have not had a single problem. Don't waste your money on anything else. This is the BEST MP3 player on the market. I researched for months and this was the best buy for the buck. If you really want an MP3 player, BUY SANDISK.

PROS
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1) cheap

2) easy to use

3) tons of storage

4) long lasting battery

5) great style

6) lightweight

7) FM radio works great


CONS
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1) no expanable memory

2) head phones are junk

I was really amazed at how good this thing sounded for such a small unit. Extremely easy to use. I was up and running in a matter of a couple of minutes. Computer recognized and installed required drivers when plugging in the USB cable. Unit is quite capable of being loud. Headphones sound really good but they hurt. Way too big. Guess that's the price to pay to get good sound but I will be buying a different pair of ear buds as I need something that will fit inside a motorcycle helmet. Great unit.