SanDisk announced the release of the final version of the Sansa View today, apparently dumping the original View design the company had unveiled earlier this year. This new design however may make a serious challenger for the latest iPod Nano from Apple with a larger 2.4″ display, up to 16GB of storage and more.

The View supports playback of MP3, protected and unprotected WMA, WAV, audio along with MPEG4, WMV, H.264 and DivX video playback at a nice 30 frames per second. It will also show JPEG photos and play Audible files. In addition to just playing your stored media, this player also packs in an FM tuner with the ability to remember up to 20 preset stations, and also houses a voice recorder with a built-in microphone. And, the storage can even expanded from that already impressive 16GB of storage with a microSD/SDHC slot. The 2.4-inch TFT color display has a 320×240 resolution and the rechargeable battery promises 35 hours of continuous audio playback, or 7 hours of video.

Sony has lifted the veil of secrecy surrounding its musical robotic egg, the Rolly, that we first reported to you a week ago. The 300 gram gizmo is a moving MP3 player that is motion sensitive; give it a spin in one direction and the Rolly’s volume will go up, the other way and the tunes will lower down. Pushing the Rolly forwards, backwards or giving it a shake will allow you to change songs. While it’s moving about the side corners of it will “flap” and a cascade of pretty blue and green lights will undulate from the bottom of the Rolly.

Along with quietly rolling out the Insignia Pilot, Best Buy also took the wraps off of the Insignia Sport “sporting” a similar but scaled down feature set with a scaled down price. Coming with an internal memory capacity of 2GB or 4GB, the Sport is also Bluetooth compatible letting you listen with your wireless Bluetooth headset. It supports playback of MP3, WMA, WMA Lossless, WMA DRM and OGG music formats along with slightly choppy (15fps) MPEG4 video and JPEG still images.

The player has 1.7″ color LCD screen and an FM tuner with RDS so you can see the artist and song names from participating stations, and lets you save the RDS data of songs you like for later when you want to get online and download them. Speaking of saving song related information, this player also lets you rates songs that you play from your media with a dedicated ratings button.

Last weekend Best Buy made a quiet release of their latest line of the budget-minded Insignia media players, one of which being the 4GB Insignia Pilot. The Insignia players have always been somewhat in the background, offering decent “Best-Buy brand” players at affordable prices, but this latest release has some competitive features at a very competitive price which should give a lot of more popular brands a run for their money.

The player supports playback of MP3, WMA, WMA Lossless, WMA DRM, WMA Pro, OGG, WAV and Audible audio files along with MPEG4 (30 fps) and WMV (30 fps) for video. It will also support viewing JPEG still images. Users can watch video and view images on a nice-sized 2.4″ widescreen LCD and it offers up to 25 hours of audio playback on a single charge.

Along with yesterday’s release of the new video Walkman’s from Sony, they also released a smaller, non-video line of Walkmans which were somewhat overshadowed in the announcement. Although the new NWZ-B100 series do not have video, they do have a 3-line color LCD display to show functions and tracks playing.

The small Walkman supports playing MP3 and WMA audio files and is compatible with Microsoft’s PlayForSure music service. It also has a FM tuner with the ability to set as many as 30 preset stations, and it can record the radio broadcast directly to the player as MP3’s. It also has a microphone built-in should you want to record your own, personally sung songs to the player for future easy-listening.

As you might notice by the additional little logo on the front, Panasonic has upgraded its D-Snap MP3 player to now include Bluetooth 2.0 connectivity. The new D-Snap SV-SD950N has also added a couple buttons on the front to let its player hook up wirelessly with your Bluetooth phone, hands-free car unit or a Bluetooth stereo headset.

Aside from the added connectivity the D-Snap appears to be the same, still featuring its special noise canceling and comes packaged with a 1GB SD card. The only other changes, which are not quite as cool, are a decreased battery life due to the Bluetooth running and an increased price. The D-Snap SV-SD950N is expected to hit shelves in Japan on September 21.

Source (translated)

Two new additions to Samsung’s line of digital media players have made their introduction to the world. The YP-P2 and YP-T10 are ultra-slim (0.3 for the first, 0.4 inches for the latter) and both have built-in Bluetooth 2.0 capability so you can listen via wireless Bluetooth 2.0 headphones or speakers.

The T10 is the lesser spec’ed of the pair with a 16:9 2.0-inch display screen (240 x 320), battery life for up to 30 hours of music listening or 4 hours of watching a movie and 4 GB of NAND flash memory. The P2 can be picked up in either a 4 GB or 8 GB size and squeezes another 5 hours of music listening/1 hour of video from its batteries, has a 3-inch wide screen (480 x 272) and has a sleep timer and auto-off feature not found in its sibling.

Both …

While it may not be as eco-friendly as a MP3 player that comes with rechargeable batteries the NHC Ecolong does an amazing job on just a single AAA battery. How amazing? Try up to 85 hours of delivering the tunes. That’s like over two full weeks of work of sonic disruption for your ears!

Coming in either camouflages green or ivory white the Ecolong measures 78 x 36.6 x 18.5mm and weighs 36 grams. While the storage capacity is 1 GB and it plays less file formats than other more expensive DMPs out there (it does handle the more popular MP3/WMA files) it’s priced smartly for Asian customers at around ¥5980 (or $50 USD, give or take a few dimes on the day’s exchange rate via an online retailer.)

And hey, if you’re a green consumer and …

How tiny is the Sansa Clip, SanDisk’s latest MP3 player? That photo above doesn’t lie: the Clip is double the height of a quarter or almost the same size as your average golf ball. The Sansa Clip plays just MP3 and WMA formats but it does have a nice selection of features including a built-in FM radio, voice recorder, OLED screen and a 15-hour battery life.

It will come in four colors (black, pink, red and blue) and arrive in stores next month in either 1 GB ($40) or 2 GB ($60) models, and its trim size may do a lot to take away some sales from a certain company that is named after a red fruit. With a device this small you may need to pick up a couple of them just in case you leave one in your pants …

It would appear that someone was paying more attention in their high school shop class than myself. Captain Odegard of the anything but ipod forums has managed to create a zen stone… out of a felled tree. Made out of pine, the good captain shaped and molded the Zen and then Burned the lettering and control buttons in with a hot knife.

Coming in at 8.25 X 5.5 X 2 inches the device most certainly won’t fit in your pocket, but i would imagine it attracts more attention than its little brother. And as a side note to Creative, sorry gentlemen the internal components are not that of the zen stone due to the steep price in Norway. The wood stone tries to make up for it’s size by providing four times the memory of it’s plastic counterpart via a 4GB SD …

Wal-Mart is jumping on the DRM-free bandwagon by announcing today it is making available MP3s for purchase without license restrictions. These tracks should be available starting now.

The new DRM-free tracks and albums are available major record labels such as Universal and EMI Music. The tunes will be available at 94 cents per track and $9.22 per album. Wal-Mart will continue to offer its existing WMA-format music downloads as well.

Klegg Electronics, another on the fringes electronics company trying to eek a living out of the iPod dominated portable audio player market, announced earlier this week an updated version of its Mini MP3 player. This model is available in three body colors for around $60.

The Klegg Mini MP3 player offers up 1GB of storage, which is enough to hold between 300 to 500 songs as well as lots of digital images. This player has a small color display on the front side and is itself a small device, measuring 1.8-inches x 1.5-inches x 0.6-inches. You also get a built-in FM radio with the ability to record FM broadcasts.

Hmmm…does this portable media player design seem familiar? It’s not who you think it is - a company by the name of Scotty Media Players surfaced on our radar today announcing a “fifth generation” of MP3/MP4 players. These look to be available now at $79 for 4GB, $99 for 8GB and $159 for 60GB.

Let’s focus on the 60GB model (note though as well on the company’s Web site the smaller players). Interesting design similarities aside we find this Scotty Media Player to be pretty well loaded with features. It’s designed to sync with your music and movies through Windows Media Player. It has a touch sensitive “click wheel” for navigation and a 1.8-inch OLED display. This PMP is compatible with AMV, MP2, MP3, WMA, WMV, ASF, WAV, AVI, DivX, ASF, MPEG, QuickTime and RealMedia and offers a reported 55 hours of battery life.

Creative has quietly brought to American shores a Zen MP3 player which has built-in speakers. The Zen Wav is on sale through Wal-Mart in 2GB and 4GB sizes.

The Creative Zen Wav, announced earlier this year, lets you play your standard MP3 and WMA music files as well as view AVI files and digital images on its 1.5-inch color display. The player gets up to 30 hours of playtime through headphones or 20 hours through its speakers before needing the battery recharged. You also get a FM radio to entertain you when really bored.

This carabiner-style MP3 player and radio tuner from Highgear sports a special clip that allows you to attach your MP3 player to just about anything with the assurance that its going to stay there, whether it be your belt loop, back pack or along outdoors with your climbing gear. A little rain won’t hurt you either with its splashproof design.

The entire player with clip measures 5.5″ long and has 512MB of internal storage that can be transferred to and from via USB. It supports MP3, WMA and ADPCM file formats as well as plays the radio with a built-in FM tuner. You can have it remember up to 12 preset stations and tweak the sound with an on-board equalizer. The carabiner mp3 player comes with a battery included out of the box and retails for $49.99.