Are you looking for a cheap MP3 player that has video capabilities?  If you are, the cheapest player out there is Insignia Sport.  It has fairly good sound quality (it’s not going to win any awards by any means), has an FM radio tuner, and is pretty easy to connect to the computer for downloading music.  Also, while the navigation could be a lot better, you get used to it over time.

The Insignia MP3 player does have problems every once in a while when trying to read corrupted MP3 files.  If it comes across a file it can’t read, it simply freezes up and won’t do anything you ask it to do.  Since it doesn’t have a reset button, you ultimately end up either having to take out the batteries (which is nearly impossible) or waiting for the batteries to die completely in the unit.  It also an annoying way of sorting music.  While you can organize the files on the player in folders, it only display the MP3 music by common tags like title, artist, genre, or album.  While this isn’t too bad, it can get a bit irritating when the song you’re looking for is improperly tagged.  To prevent that type of problem, you can buy tagging software for you music to make sure your songs are all consistent.

Advantages of the Insignia Sport 2 GB:

• It has decent sound for the money.  Uses an equalizer to get your tunes to rock your way.
• Built-in FM tuner.
• Uses a MicroSD expansion slot so that you can add more songs to it.
• Good battery life.
• Simple to move songs from your PC to the MP3 player.  No weird software needed.
• Uses Bluetooth technology for connecting to speakers wirelessly.

Disadvantages:

• The video portion of the player can be a nuisance at times.  It’s difficult to find video formats that will actually play.  No big deal if you’re not wanting to watch a ton of movies with this media player.

Beyond the main disadvantage, you won’t be disappointed for the price that you pay for the Insignia MP3 player.  It’s very cheap and it gets the job done pretty well.  If you’re looking for a cool gadget to use for a stocking stuff at Christmas, you won’t go wrong choosing this player as a gift.

The SanDisk Sansa Fuze proves to be a great small inexpensive MP3 player. Compared to the iPod Nano, the Sansa Fuze has a quite a few advantages. While the actual body of the unit is the same size as the Nano, it’s screen is a bit smaller which may be deal-breaker for some people. For most people the screen size won’t make much of a difference–especially if they aren’t going to be watching any movies on it. If you are a video person, however, you may want to choose the Apple IPod Nano instead. For navigation, it uses a wheel very similar to the iPod’s except that it has a more tactile “click” to it which can be very satisfying to turn at times. Its battery life is pretty much as advertised and doesn’t score the Fuze any extra points.

If you’re wondering why you SHOULD get a SanDisk Sansa Fuze it’s: the built-in voice recorder, the micro SD card expansion slot, compatibility with Microsoft audio formats (WMA), extremely cheap price, and built-in FM radio. The expandable memory alone (besides the low cost) should be reason enough to get the player. If you find that 4 GB MP3 player isn’t enough for you later on, you can expand it later to 8 GB or more.

Advantages of the Sansa Fuze:

• While the screen isn’t as big as the Apple iPod Nano, it’s still more than big enough for watching a video on the bus or plane.
• Very simple to navigate around on the screen.  The spinning wheel is very fun to rotate.
• Built-in MicroSD card slot is awesome for adding more memory to your MP3 player when you need it.  Plus, most phones use this card too so you can swap it back and forth to share songs and pictures.
• It has a built-in FM radio tuner with the ability to record songs from the radio.
• It has a built-in voice recorder which is great for those boring classes that you don’t want to take notes for.

Disadvantages of the SanDisk Sansa Fuze:

• At times, it can be really annoying to transfer videos over to the unit.  If you have a lot of movies you want to watch on the player, you can get frustrated trying to find a format that will actually work.
• Turning the MP3 player on and off can be annoying if you have large fingers.
• It doesn’t have a lot of accessories to go along with it.  If you love dressing up your MP3 players with pink silicon sleeves and plugging it into an awesome docking station, you may be disappointed with the amount of choice available.

Besides its few disadvantages, the Sansa Fuze is an excellent choice for the beginning or average MP3 player user.  It’s great for someone looking for a small MP3 player with multimedia capabilities.  If you want to watch movies on an MP3 player you may lot like the Fuze because of the small screen, but other than that, it’s a great buy.