SanDisk Sansa e270 6 GB MP3 Player with SD Expansion Slot (Black)
by SanDisk
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List Price: Our Price: $64.68 You Save: $235.31 (78%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Category: Network Media Player See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of SanDisk Sansa e270 6 GB MP3 Player with SD Expansion Slot (Black)
Customer Review: A relative good option but not designed for a non-Windows user
Summary: 2 Stars
In a nutshell, this is a quite good MP3 plays. I have owned a number of MP3 players over the years and this one is one of the best. However, if you using Linux (and possibly other non-Windows OSs) this is NOT a good option.
Advantages:
- Good battery life. If you think the icrap products are good, you haven't seen nothing yet
- Very intuitive (I didn't even have to read the manual to get the hang of it. Simple as using a calculator but more powerful than many other MP3 players)
- Allows a number of different languages, including the less common ones. Although this doesn't affect me personally since I can understand English quite well, someone who prefers to see the menus in his/her mother tongue has this option
- Sleek and strong. Haven't dropped it yet, but I have the feeling that it is not as fragile as some other, more fancy, MP3 players. The back of the device is metal-based.
- Very easy to use interface + there is a hold key (which is very handy if you plan to use this device outdoors)
- Charges from the USB port of your computer but you can also charge it from your car lighter or an AC outlet (for the last two you need to get a couple of accessories, which you pay for extra though)
- Comes with a few sample files so you can its function without having to download all your media library on it.
- Plenty of built-in memory. Let's face it, you are not going to watch movies on this device, so you don't need the 10s of GBs of space that other media players offer. As for the mp3s and photos you might want to listen/view, the 6 GBs of memory are more than adequate for that (unless you want to take it on a 3 month safari trip or something).
- Descent earphones. I have seen better and if you want to spend a lot of time listening to MP3s on this device you might want to use a more professional headset, BUT the earphones it comes with offer quite good sound quality.
- It takes a small SD card. In case the 6 Gigs are not enough for you, you can easily add more flash memory by buying a small SD card. This may be particularly useful if you want to transfer files from a phone that has an SD card of this type.
Disadvantages:
- It takes a long time to connect with a Linux OS
- After you download the files from a Linux PC they may not be visible by the firmware of the device, which is a pain
- It does not work with Mac
- The built-in flash memory is rather slow (compared to most flash memory USB devices). Having said that, it is not frustratingly slow, so if you plan ahead what files to copy, you can leave it downloading the files from your computer and grab a cup of coffee or something.
- It doesn't come with an AC charger. You have to buy that extra, assuming you can find one. Not a problem for someone shopping from Amazon though as you can get a good bundle for very little money.
Overall evaluation:
All in all, this is very good value for money. Not the best media player around, but you wouldn't want to get one that you would have to insure, are you? The only reason I could think of that someone would prefer an ipod over this is probably ignorance. This product is cheap enough so that if it breaks down you won't be losing sleep over your loss, but good enough so that you won't need to replace it by the next holiday shopping. Not recommended for Linux and Mac users though, unless of course you plan to use it primarily with a small SD card. As I have not tested the product thoroughly, I cannot account for the positive aspects of this review.
Customer Review: iPod lovers beware...
Summary: 5 Stars
IPOD lovers beware. There's a new player in town. The Sandisk Sansa E200 series. Now for the review:
The iPod nano. You can listen to music and look at photos. 4gb. $250. I don't get it. The Sansa Sandisk. You can look at photos, watch movies, listen to music, listen to FM, record FM, record VOICE, expand the memory via microSD cards, etc. for less than $250 for a 6gb player.
I have had my 4gb Sansa Sandisk, and directly compared it to an iPod nano 4gb. Here's my thoughts.
1. Screen is better on the Sansa E200 series, brightness is unmatched
2. Back of Sansa is extremely difficult to scratch, Nano is very easy to scratch.
3. Sounds quality: Equal footing, i couldn't tell the difference between the two.
4.Navigation: I almost prefer the iPod nano on this one. The Jog dial on the Sansa is a bit too tactile for my taste. However, I am now use to it and doesn't harm my enjoyment of the Sansa.
5. Sansa e200 series you can import photos...such a small screen its not very worthwhile to put a high-detailed photo on there, but some photos look good. Ipod the same.
6. Sansa you can watch movies. I imported a Family Guy episode, and imported Lawrence of Arabia onto the Sansa. Family guy episode went great, and fast. It was only around 15-20 minutes long, and the sansa had to break up the file. However, the only pause I saw once it transitioned from the first file to the second was a slight "jump" in the film and a small distortion in the sound. Not bad at all! Lawrence was the same, but the 4th file didn't copy over at all. Not sure where it went. I tried again, and it copied just fine. The movie plays great. Software is okay, but fine overall.
7. Accessories. This is where any MP3 player looses out. Apple is everywhere with iPod. Car stereos, speaker docks, etc. Time will tell how well Sansa competes in this area.
8. Battery life. My sansa played music for a total of 18:42. The Nano (with the same playlist) played only for 14:55. Thats almost 4 hours extra. Nice job Sansa! And the battery is user-replaceable!
9. Software. I used Rhapsody, Media Monkey, and iTunes to sort and transfer music to the MP3 players. Itunes only worked with the IPOD, and Rhapsody and Media Monkey were fine with the Sansa. I much prefer Rhapsody than Itunes. The feel of it, the ease of transfering, the playlist/last listened to features are superb, though itunes is good as well (it just won't work with the Sansa)
10. Stability: Nano wins here. The Sansa is on its 2nd firmware release, and a 3rd one promising a LOT of improvements is just around the corner (as of 7/14/06). The Sansa has locked up once while transfering music, and locked up for 10 seconds while I was trying to back out of a movie. The Nano never once locked up. Good job Apple, but Sandisk is giving their Sansa a lot of support.
Overall I love my Sansa. For the price i paid for the 4gb ($150 on deal, coupon) at almost $100 LESS than the Nano, the Sansa wins by a good margin of features for the price. I just hope Sansa keeps up with developing new firmware to help out the stability of the player as well as add new features. This and more accesories. I talked to Sandisk and they said a compatible speaker dock as well as a car charger/FM broadcaster were going to be released this fall for the e200 series.
Sandisk, i give your Sansa a 5-star rating. Ipod Nano, compared to the Sansa I knock you down to a 4-star rating.
Customer Review: Unusable if you travel without a laptop to charge the player
Summary: 1 Stars
I just bought a SanDisk Sansa e270, and deeply regret the purchase. I need a travel charger and a spare battery, but you don't sell either, and will not tell me what other chargers, if any are compatible with the e270. Your technical support representative's answers are absolutely useless - I have cut and pasted my questions and his responses below. Given the non-existent customer support, I will not buy another SanDisk product again.
Your Question/Problem: I want to use the Sansa e270 when I travel, but won't be carrying a laptop. How do I charge the battery since you don't sell a travel charger? Can I use the IPod Nano/mini charger brick and plug the Sansa USB into it? If not, what can I use.
Also, I want to buy a spare battery since it is user replaceable, but you don't sell it either. Where do I buy one?
SanDisk Response: (06/20/2006 08:09)
Thank you for contacting SanDisk Technical Support.
I understand how inconvenience the issue may be causing you.
As of now there is no available wallcharger and spare battery for the Sansa e200 series. Also we do not recommend that you use the charger of the ipod player, considering that is not a product of SanDisk.
If you have any further questions, please feel free to reply to this e-mail.
Thank you for choosing SanDisk.
Have a nice day!
Sincerely,
Michael Louie I.
SanDisk Technical Support
Your Response: (06/21/2006 08:03) My trips typically last 2-4 weeks, so I really do need to charge. Since you do not sell chargers and batteries, and recommend not using non-SanDisk chargers, that makes my SanDisk unusable after the charge runs out.
The only alternative is to use the IPod charger - please tell me what the correct voltage, amperage, and polarity is to charge the Sansa e270. I am willing to use a non-SanDisk product even if it means voiding the warranty. Otherwise I have wasted almost $300. And when will you start selling spare batteries, since one of the reasons I bought the Sansa was because SanDisk advertised it had a replaceable battery - although this may be true in theory, it is not true if you don't sell one!
SanDisk Response: (06/21/2006 08:03)
Thank you for contacting SanDisk Technical Support.
I understand how inconvenience the issue may be causing you.
The ampherage, polarity and voltage are all proprietary information that we are unable to release at this time.
You may try to do a search on a compatible charger for the Sansa e200 series player. However we do not guarantee that anything will work with it until we put a charger on the market. But we have no information when it will be out.
If you have any further questions, please feel free to reply to this e-mail.
Thank you for choosing SanDisk.
Have a nice day!
Sincerely,
Michael Louie I.
SanDisk Technical Support
Customer Review: The Good, bad and ugly
Summary: 3 Stars
I have since resolved most of the problems I had with subscription services eventually getting the Sansa to work with Napster service but not Rhapsody. However, Sansa music downloads from Napster generate multiple download errors once I have download 3 or 4 playlists. Also, the more music you have on your Sansa, the longer it takes to download successive tracks. Napster confirmed that the Sansa e270 is not compatible with their service. This is what I would recommend to minimize problems with subscription services.
1) Use Windows Media Player 10 NOT Version 11 Beta - Version 11 Beta did not work with my Sansa.
2) Format the Sansa with Windows Media Player 10 PRIOR to connecting to Napster (just deleting the songs Sandisk provides on the Sansa upon shipment does not delete all the tracks for some reason and created a problem for me so formating was the only solution that worked.
The Sansa now works for the most part with my subscription service and allows me to download 3 or 4 Napster playlists directly to my Sansa!.
The good:
The Sansa e270 looks great, is amazingly small and has a good display. The 6GB storage is large enough that you no longer need a hard drive device which means you get player with great battery life and able to stand up to knocks without skipping / breaking. If you have a lot of purchased music or CDs on your computer, then this is the MP3 player for you - (see my warning below about subscription services!)
The bad:
Scroll wheel feels a little cheap and button placement takes some getting used to especially if you have big fingers
The Sansa e270 does not support playlist created on Rhapsody, Yahoo or Napster. You can set up playlist but this is done on the device which is extremely time consuming especially if you are a playlist guy like myself.
Placement of the record button means you inadvertanly hit it initiating recording while you are handling the player.
The Ugly:
The Sansa e270 support for subscription music services is extremely buggy. I would not purchase the e270 if you plan to use it with Rhapsody, Yahoo, Napster or other subscription services. After spending several hours trying to figure out why my tracks would not download ( I eventually re-loaded firmware and reset device), I evetually managed to download tracks. However, the next day at the gym I got a message telling me to re-synch and none of the tracks would play. Now I'm trying to figure out how to renew the licesne so I can play music on my Sansa. I never had this problem with my Creative Zen MP3 player.
Conclusion - The Sansa is close to an Ipod killer but limited support for subscription players will relegate it to "also ran" status compared to Zen MP3 players, which fully support subscription services. Great design, good features, consider if you own a lot of your own music. Give the Sensa e270 a miss if you like playlists or use subscription services.
Customer Review: Video clips? Not really.
Summary: 2 Stars
I will not disagree about the music capabilities others have reported. However, the video clip implementation is terrible.
They list a variety of supported clip formats. THEY ARE NOT NATIVE to this device. Everything must be converted. This player can only understand an apparently proprietary setting for Quicktime files. Only .mov format....and only with unknown settings. Do not attempt to copy a .mov file directly. It will not work.
You must convert ALL video and photos using the Sansa Converter, written by the terrible software company ArcSoft.
1. You are supposed to be able to import VOBs. WRONG. It will import about 30 seconds of a VOB, say everything is OK, and when you go to play it back everything outside of the short 30 seconds is gone. There is no way around this bug.
2. You have absolutely no control over compression settings. If you use the converter with an .mp4 file that is lower in bit rate than it wants, it upconverts to a higher bit rate. The device can handle one, and only one, format and depends on all other formats to be converted using this flawed utility.
3. If you import a somewhat lengthy video, the program divides the video into 114 megabyte segments...it stops for about 10 seconds between these. There is no way to avoid this. If you try to join the files, they will not play.
4. The compression is about 65%...therefore expect 1 gig to take 325+ or so megs of space.
5. The Sansa/ArchSoft converter software gives an 'unknown failure' abort when converting any .mpgs produced by Nero or Movie Factory.
Pros:
This is really a nifty player. I like the wheel implementation.
The battery life is amazing. I have run full color videos with maximum sound and had battery left after 8-10 hours...I did not have patience to test further.
However, tech support is useless, they have no concern about flaws or providing for the issue of battery charging support, replacement batteries and cables in the future. You cannot get a cable or battery...anywhere, including from SanDisk. If you lose the cable you are out of luck and must discard the unit.
I suggest this is a flawed implementation of a good idea.
Update
The firmware is very unstable.
Do NOT try and read data from the unit, or it will go into a nearly infinate loop "UPDATING DIRECTORY". You will need to reset several times, and if your file is large, wait up to an HOUR for the function to either work or fail.
Very frustrating.
ONLY use this unit with the supplied software and ONLY with Windows Media Player for management. Anything else is a recipe for potential disaster. I talked to SanDisk USA support, and they confirmed were aware of some of my observations. Firmware updates are to fix these things.....someday.