1. Introduction

Colourful flash players in pocket sizes for pocket prices; the SanDisk Sansa e270 and the Creative Zen V.

Want a tiny, lightweight media player with a colour screen for photos and videos? You could get an iPod nano, or you could get a player that's cheaper, a player that has more features or a player that has more storage. Or a player like the Sansa e270 that's all three. Sansa's low prices (and the better margins it give dealers) are helping it gain ground over Creative, but the budget Zen V has some attractive features too.

SanDisk Sansa E270

The glowing blue scroll wheel takes you through the Sansa e270's circular menu.

SanDisk makes flash memory, which is the most expensive component in a flash-based media player. That's how it can sell a 6 GB player like the e270 for the same price as a 2 GB iPod Nano; the e280 is the same player with 8 GB of storage for the price of a 4 GB iPod Nano. And the microSD slot means you can add extra storage; 2Gb now and more as cards get larger. That microSD slot, the built-in voice recorder and the 1.8" colour screen (nearly twice the size of the iPod Nano screen) do make it heavier (75g compared to 43g for the Nano or the Zen V).

But that isn't too heavy to wear around your neck and the e270 comes with a lanyard with a rubbery cable that feels rather more substantial than the cable on the headphones. If you don't like the feel of that, the grip at the end of the lanyard unscrews so you could replace it with a cord of your own. And while the pouch it comes with is basic rather than stylish, the lining has enough texture not to slip off the e270 while you're wearing it.

The controls are certainly similar to an iPod; there's a central scroll wheel that lights up with a blue backlight. The case is rather different, with a textured metal back that doesn't show fingerprints and is almost impossible to scratch, and a lacquered polycarbonate front that doesn't pick up scuffs or scratches easily. It's thicker than a Nano but the styling is sleek rather than chunky, especially with the glowing blue wheel, and for a device this small it feels very robust in your hand. You have to compare the e270 and e280 to the iPod Nano - and in many ways they come out on top.

The scroll wheel has a series of ridges on, so your finger won't slip even if you're wearing gloves. The action isn't as smooth as we'd like but that does mean you get plenty of feedback so you know it's turning. The icons on the menu (music, photo, video, voice, settings) are actually arranged in a circle and you can't quite see all five on screen at once but it doesn't really matter because you can scroll round to the one you want quickly enough. You can drive almost everything with the wheel and the big round selector button in the middle but the four buttons around the wheel also take you up, down, forward and back if your fingers fall on them instead. The menu button even toggles between bring up the menu and taking you back to the track you're playing.

You use the centre button to start playing music but not to pause it; instead it cycles you through information about the song ; elapsed time, album cover , next song and an animation of the levels. And the bottom button brings up the relevant options for music, photos, video or voice recordings, depending on what you're doing. It's a very natural interface for anything you can do with the wheel - which is very intuitive for controlling volume and brightness, setting the time or anything else that's tedious to scroll through one click at a time. But the other buttons are really too small to find quickly when you're trying to pause, fast forward or rewind. Playing controls aren't sophisticated; just an on-the-go playlist and basic shuffle and repeat options.

Join our discussion on this topic