2. Sansa Connect, Continued

Don’t think WiFi as a replacement for the (proprietary) USB cable; you can’t use it to transfer music from your PC or to stream music from the Connect. But if you get bored with the music you’ve copied across - which you can do with MP3, WMA and all DRM WMA formats including Rhapsody using Yahoo! Music, Windows Media Player or just by dragging files in Explorer - you can choose from a list of LAUNCHcast Internet radio stations, all of which let you skip and rewind tracks. If you have an unlimited Yahoo! Music subscription, you can also download a song that you find on a radio station, or the whole album that the song comes from or a playlist of "similar" songs. With a few clicks you can pick a favorite album or try something new, which could be quicker than selecting it from the library on your PC. Downloads happen in the background at a reasonable speed (around 15 seconds a song on a fast connection). They’re queued, so if you leave your WiFi connection halfway through, they’ll resume when you get back.

Let the Connect log into Yahoo! Messenger and you can exchange recommendations with other Yahoo! using friends and download them wirelessly, without the irritating limitations of sharing on a Zune. And if you take the time to rate tracks, albums and artists on the Connect or on the Yahoo! Music site you can get personalized recommendations as well as popular new music. Pick a track here and it downloads to your library rather than streaming so you can use this to stock up on new music, and you can choose whether new songs overwrite existing tracks. You can’t choose a specific album or artist though - you have to wait for it to turn up as a recommendation - but if you have samples of your favorite musical styles you can easily find familiar or new tunes that are similar. The Connect can download firmware updates wirelessly so you never need to plug it into a PC if you don’t want to.

Even with the basic earbuds - some of the flimsiest ever - the sound is clear and detailed, although lacking in volume and bass. Even with better headphones like the Shure E500s or Creative Aurvanas, there isn’t a strong bass unless you turn on the bass boost EQ, which is the only one of the sound settings worth trying. Although you can change shuffle and repeat settings from the Now Playing section, you have to switch to Settings to change the EQ - but while you’re there you can turn the sound effects for the buttons and scroll wheel off altogether or choose the volume for them instead. There are players with better sound quality, but the Connect is very pleasant to listen to.

If you keep your photos on flickr you can view then on the Connect over WiFi; you can see any set or the most recent 1,000 images, which is more than you’re going to want to scroll through. You can also check out the latest "interesting" images from all flickr users but you can’t see photos from your flickr contacts. With only 4 GB of memory, it’s sensible that you can’t transfer photos into main memory, while MicroSD cards are dropping in price all the time. So the slot is a cheap way with which to put music or photos on the Connect. Digital cameras don’t use MicroSD cards, but many camera phones do, so you can use the Connect to look at images on a better screen than the average phone.

The Connect works with open WiFi networks or secure networks, with WEP and WPA - but you may run into problems if there’s a Web page you have to go through. Even with a connection some stations were occasionally unavailable. Typing out a long password by picking letters and numbers from the scroll wheel can be a little tedious but the Connect stores passwords (and your Yahoo account) for next time and connecting takes only a few seconds. There’s a flight mode for planes, which you can also use if you don’t have WiFi access and want to make sure you don’t waste battery life if you pick the wrong option.

Even without WiFi, the Connect’s battery life is on the low side at 12 hours of music playback, and if you have the wireless on for streaming music, it drops to around six hours. The radio switches off whenever it can so downloading music and looking at photos don’t use as much power as Internet radio so you’ll probably see around eight hours of mixed use. And when the Connect is plugged in to charge or transfer tracks you can still play music on it, making charging at least less disruptive.