Oh, wait -- we were just kidding about the whole "to much fanfare" bit. SanDisk's slotRadio player, which we're still struggling to understand, is all set to ship on March 31st after
debuting alongside a gazillion other gadgets at
CES. For those who've forced themselves to forget, this microSD music player can handle your own jams on your own microSD card, or alternatively, can accept pre-loaded Billboard hits cards which house over 1,000 songs that are nicely categorized by genre. It'll be available from SanDisk's own website on March 31st for $99 (which includes a card with over a thousand songs), and it should be ready to ruin Father's Day when it slips into Radio Shack locations shortly thereafter.
posted Mar 20th 2009 10:11AM
good morning engadget :). first day of spring, ya digg?
i voted slotmusic as worst gadget of the year in your awards
hmm....
This would have been intersting about 2 years ago. Today any "smart phone" can handle microSD natively. What they need is a microSD Hi-Fi.
Uh, it's called microSD. Just put higher-quality or lossless files on it.
Oh, hold on... did you mean "hi-fi" like a stereo? In that case, just plug your phone in to your existing one. :)
Hmm... how about a stereo receiver/amp that has a built-in Bluetooth radio so it can receive audio from phones and such?
Another Mp3 player only? Really? Good Luck. The convergence is happening I load all my music on my 8gb SD micro card in my Blackberry. No need to be tethered to iTunes and an iPod. Use it everyday with my Bluetooth headphones....no muss no fuss, no buying additional cards etc....and for those that think 8GB of music isnt enough? that's why I have a TB drive at home that I can log into from anywhere. I predict this product will go no where....but hey guys thanks for tryin'.
Great! BestBuy will have a 6"X6" blister packaging for something the size of thumbnail?
Give me a slutRadio and i'm sold
I can't tell if your A button types a U, as evidenced in your post and name, or if it was a freudian slip.
I don't think either case is correct. Plus, why would he type slatRadio?
I dont see anything make it worth $99
It is worth $99 if it is a good sized microSD card with 1000 songs of your choice
Yay, another gadget from Sandisk nobody wants. Those Slotmusic Players are just flying off the shelves at the local Best Buy, I sure hope Best Buy makes another mistake and sells this product as well.
Buttons?! Screen?! Song navigation?!
It's 2009 SanDisk. Get with the times.
Yeah, all they have to do is just slap a chromed fruit-shaped logo on it and jack up the price a few hundred more bucks and it should sell like hotcakes.
That actually is not a bad idea. 1000 songs and a player. What would be nice is if they did Billboard top 100 for a decade. Say $100 for the player with a decade included, and the option to buy additional decades for $75 or so. Individual year top 100 sets for $10-$15.
>Shuffle
What's the point of this device? Who is the market for it?
What moronic marketing person came up with this idea?
How is this better than buying music on Amazon and just downloading it to an MP3 player?
For 1000 songs, it's one hell of a lot cheaper.
I don't think this is the terrible idea people are making it out to be. We're most certainly not the target market, but this isn't a bad deal.
I think it's a bit expensive but I am actually really interested in paying $100 for 1000 top BIllboard hits. I probably could assemble this manually but I would pay for this "pack" if iTunes offered it. It saves me from having to skip so many bad tracks at the gym.
Who needs a slumdog player?
I dunno...I rather like the music on a card aspect of this. I've wondered why it had not already happened. Why can't we get video this way as well? Yeah, the 'album art' on CD's, DVD's and vinyl is nice, but it is much easier to store hundreds (or however big your library might be) on small memory cards than it is the much larger discs (or, heaven forbid, tape). I think it makes sense and I have been at a loss as to why it has been so roundly poo-poo'ed in the press. Not crazy about that player, but if I could use the cards in my smartphone, portable players, computer or even digital photo frames, this would be killer.
or you could just load your music to your phone, thats called an MP3 player so you dont have to carry around hundreds of little cards afraid of loosing them, all your songs are together.
one of the worst ideas since Mini Disc players, and hit clips, aint nobody gonna buy this shit except for the dumb dumbs and middle school whores.
FILA,
Are you arguing against SlotMusic or this player?
Because if it's the player, what is stopping you buying a high-capacity microSD card... you don't have to buy SlotMusic anything...and you have the choice of removing it or keeping it in there forever. Just because it may be branded SlotMusic doesn't mean it can't take regular high-capacity microSD cards.
I fail to see how more choice is bad. There are so few players out there with removable flash media (and batteries), and it's a damn shame....because both these are more than likely the first things to fail and perpetuate replace-itis and sheep-like, drone-like repeat consumerism to replace dead devices.
If this player also has a removable battery, I think it would be killer, assuming SanDisk gets the basics right regarding usability, sound quality and file format support (FLAC would be very nice).
For what it's worth, MiniDisc (Hi-MD) units are still the best portable recorders for their price, IMO. I personally can't do without their remotes, too. I can go on forever, I can talk about the sound and the fact it records from anything really really well, but I think there's no point doing that here...
Wow, we're acting awfully bitchy about a $99 player, aren't we? I haven't always had the best of luck with Sansa players, but I don't have a problem with using SHDC cards as storage, and a thousand free songs is a pretty sweet bonus. I'd be willing to give this an honest chance if I didn't already have an iPod Touch.
Good Lord, get a Zune. For that $105 you could have a Zune pass for 7 months. Yeah, you'd only get to KEEP 70 songs, but during the subscription you get as much as you can download otherwise. Oh and no need to sift through tons of crap songs from any of the various Billboard list.
I dunno... It's kind of a neat "other option," I'm just wondering who's actually going to bite.
Well, 1000 songs for $99 including the player and a mystery sized microSD card isn't that bad of a deal...certainly beats Steve Jobs pricing, ahem.