SanDisk SlotRadio

SanDisk's ultra-budget player offers songs for cheap, if you can stomach the restrictions.

If SanDisk’s original SlotMusic concept raised your budget-seeking antennae with a $20 player, but lost its appeal at $15 albums, the new company’s new SlotRadio Player may pick up where the original left off. The tiny Shuffle-like player will cost you $100 up front, but comes preloaded with 1,000 Billboard top 40 hits across a number of genres.

Though that works out to about 10 cents a song, even with the price of the player included, the player does have a number of caveats. For instance, songs can’t be deleted from the player make room for more or moved to a computer to play somewhere else, and even on the player itself, they cannot be individually selected: only by genre.

Still, the die-cast aluminum player does off a 1.5-inch OLED screen, an FM radio, and even a belt clip. And if you get tired of the original 1,000 songs, you can pick up packs of 1,000 more in specific genres of your choosing for $40 (pushing cost per song down to just four cents).

SanDisk will begin offering the SlotRadio player through Sansa.com and RadioShack stores in early 2009. Additional information on the line can be found at the company’s Web site.

SanDisk SlotRadio