Sandisk Sansa Shaker

I love toys. Maybe that’s not a sensible way to start off a review – but I’ve done it, so there! Needless to say, I’m particularly thrilled when I’m sent something like the Sansa Shaker, an odd-looking device that seems to be targeted at the younger generation.

Form Factor
True to its name, the Sansa Shaker looks very much like a Shaker – the salt-and-pepper kind. Since it has a speaker on one end with the holes, I really did expect it to ‘serve’ (pardon the pun) a dual purpose.

On the other end, if you unscrew the ’lid’, is an AAA battery compartment, a mini-USB port, and a slot for an SD card. The Sansa Shaker has two separate 3.5mm earphone sockets on either side of the player, just beneath the volume band. There’s a Play/Pause/Power key in the front, above the track skip band located at the bottom.

What I mean by ‘band’ is that the controls for the volume and track selection are usable by turning the white portion (band) in the direction shown. Much as in those pepper mills on the dinner table. Only Sansa’s version doesn’t crush all the technology inside to powder.
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Performance
There aren’t any settings; this is a simple plug-and-play device. Just connect it to your PC, copy-paste your music, and you’re good to go.

You can choose to listen to music via the small external speaker if you want, but the output is quite low. Then again it’s not really meant to be loud. Imagine if it were loud and you had a kid running around with it, music blaring. Could be annoying, to put it mildly.

The quality through the bundled earphones is quite good though. I’d like to think that the maximum volume was deliberately kept low to avoid any potential damage to tender young ears. Even at peak volume, if two earphones are plugged in at the same time, the volume tends to drop. But it’s clear enough and the earphones are quite comfy as well.

The controls are easy and fun to play with. Battery life is perfectly adequate, with a total playing time of about 10 hours. The bad part about the Shaker is that it has no internal memory, so you have to rely on an SD card.

The Bottom Line
The player isn’t simply a kid’s toy. It could make a really cool present for someone – kid or adult. A little clip is provided that makes it easy to carry around. I daresay it looks kind of cool too. At a price of approximately Rs. 2,399 with a one-year warranty and a 512 SD card included with the package, it’s worth it. Hopefully it’ll be able to withstand the kind of (ab)use children are capable of throwing at it. Or adults, for that matter.