SanDisk today unveiled the world’s largest capacity flash-based MP3 player.

SanDisk, known for being a leading producer of Flash RAM holds a distant number two spot in the US digital music player market behind Apple’s iPod. In an attempt to narrow the gap between itself and Apple, SanDisk has launched a MP3 player which has approximately the same price as iPod Nano, but gives double the storage value.

The Sansa e280 has a capacity of 8 gigabytes compared with the 4 gigabytes of the iPod Nano which sells for around the same price. The 8GB device sports a microSD expansion slot allowing expansion to 10GB of music—or 2,500 songs—with an optional SanDisk 2GB microSD card, making it the largest capacity flash-based MP3 player on the market.

In conjunction with the rollout of the e280 and in preparation for the holiday season, SanDisk has lowered its prices on the entire Sansa e200 line of products, including the existing 2, 4 and 6GB models.

“SanDisk is once again making it incredibly affordable for consumers to purchase the most feature-rich, high-capacity players on the market at the best possible price,” said Eric Bone, director of audio/video product marketing at SanDisk. “The most costly ingredient in a flash-based MP3 player is the flash memory. Since we make the flash memory, we essentially remove the middleman and pass that savings directly to the consumer.”

The Sansa e 280 comes with photo and video capability facilitated through the Sansa Media Converter, Digital FM tuner, voice an Fm recording, user replaceable and rechargeable Li-ion battery, scratch resistant alloy metal back casing and a multi-pin universal connector for future accessory upgrades, battery charging and USB 2.0 connectivity.

The player is designed to work seamlessly with a wide range of popular music formats such as MP3 and Windows Media Audio (WMA) in both unprotected and protected files (such as those WMA files purchased from music stores).