SanDisk boosts its Sansa View player to 32GB

With the Consumer Electronics Show 2008 in full swing in Las Vegas this week, tech company SanDisk has moved to bolster its positioning in the media player arena by unveiling new additions to its existing Sansa Clip and Sansa View player ranges. SanDisk boosts the storage capacity on its Sansa Clip and View flash-based music players. Credit: SanDisk.

SanDisk boosts the storage capacity on its Sansa Clip and View flash-based music players. Credit: SanDisk.Specifically, while the refreshed lines will be sporting nothing particularly inventive in terms of features and functions, they will be significantly improved in terms of memory capacity.For example, the View line will now shift to an impressive storage size of 32GB of flash-based memory, a figure that will arrive as good news for those consumers keen on prolonged battery performance and hardware reliability while also being of a size that makes it an attractive alternative to the superior storage generally found on existing HDD music and media players The latest 32GB View player is scheduled to arrive at retail next month for an expected price of $349 USD. It will be compatible with MP3, WMA, WMV, MPEG4, and H.264 and capable of delivering around 30-35 hours of music-based performance.Similarly, SanDisk’s diminutive Clip music player will also be given a memory enhancement, offering up to a more widely appealing 4GB of storage in return for a mere $79 USD."As a world leader in the design and production of flash memory, SanDisk continues to meet or beat the competition in raising capacities of our Sansa digital media players – giving people the freedom to carry more entertainment with them wherever they go – while maintaining prices that consumers find compelling," enthused Eric Bone, a VP of marketing at SanDisk.In terms of evaluating the worth of the refreshed View, technology Web site Ars Technica comments that 32GB might not yet be enough to tempt hardcore music collectors looking to transport their entire collection in one small device. Yet it also notes that the reliability and operational longevity advantages associated with flash memory, which has no moving components, mixed with recent storage size advances is fast making flash players serious competition for traditional HDD devices.