SanDisk Sansa e280 8 GB MP3 Player (Black)
by SanDisk
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List Price: Our Price: $40.00 You Save: $209.99 (84%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Network Media Player See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of SanDisk Sansa e280 8 GB MP3 Player (Black)
Customer Review: Bought this player in February, no longer working in November
Summary: 1 Stars
I purchased this item largely based on the good experience I had with an older Sandisk model (non-Sansa) which was stolen, and also the terrific reviews it has received here on Amazon. This is one time I've been steered wrong. Please note that many of the reviewers give their opinion after only a short time of owning this product. Well, I purchased this product at the end of February this year (2007) and it functioned - with various frustrations - until the end of November of this year.
My first frustration with this product was that it came with the Rhapsody player, in which I had no interest, and which I could not remove from the player even after my "trial period" ended. Much of the advice I found online for taking Rhapsody off (largely based on earlier models) did not work for this player. Despite my attempts to format the player, Rhapsody remained programmed onto the player, taking up about a gigabyte of space.
As another reviewer here noted, this unit does take a very long time to boot up. Of course, I have a friend who has a 30GB IPOD, and it takes about a second for that player to boot up, so I will leave it up to you to decide whether that is really a matter of the storage capacity. Additionally, when I connected the player to my computer, it did not show up as another drive, but as another item which I could not format or manipulate as easily.
I found the battery life to be rather acceptable, the sound quality was decent, although the FM tuner was quite weak. The design of the actual unit is quite durable, however, the screen is prone to scratches. It was fairly decent to use with Windows Media Player, but I found it difficult to organize the music in an order that I chose - it tended to load in a sort of alphabetical order (same as the old player, but with more grief).
In the past few weeks I stopped being able to sync new songs to the player. I was able to empty it, as several of the tracks were being skipped for some reason. But I was not able to write on it again, and it now freezes every time I try to connect the machine.
My old Sandisk was very easy to use and worked well for over a year until it was stolen. I paid about $200 for this product only 8 months ago, thinking I would get an even better product from the same manufacturer. I now feel as though I have wasted my money. I cannot in honesty recommend this product.
Customer Review: Great mp3 player
Summary: 4 Stars
SIMPLE USE
Out of the box this mp3 player was not in MSC mode, so it took me a bit to figure out that I needed to switch it. As soon I did, my computer recognized it as removable memory and I could simply drag mp3s from my computer onto the mp3 player. This is one of the reasons I bought the mp3 player. Since I have a computer at home and at work, it is nice to be able to just drag over a couple songs at a time.
The menu is easy to use, and it is straightforward to get an mp3 playing. The buttons around the wheel are hard to push (I hope sandisk reads a few of these online reviews when coming out with the next version) but after you get used to them, they don't really hinder the functionality.
The earphones are your typical uncomfortable earbuds, but sound fine.
EXTRA FEATURES
FM Radio: Actually works quite well, and you can record it! (though I'm not sure why I ever would want to do that)
Voice recorder: Easy to use and works great, though I haven't found a use for it...but I see voice recorders on sale in Radio Shack, so someone must need them.
Video playback: Since you cannot output video to a TV, this feature is not that great. I haven't watched any TV shows or anything like that on my Sansa though, so I'm probably not qualified to comment
Picture playback: I easily put quite a few pictures on my Sansa with the included transfer utility and have shown them to a few people. The screen is not that much smaller than a digital camera LCD, so if you think of it like that, it's not too bad! The pictures look pretty good, but you have to be realistic about the size of the screen...if you want a large beautiful screen to watch videos and view pictures...get a Zune or something.
Conclusion: I tried to write all of the bad things I could about this player, just so people know what they're getting in to, but overall I am extremely pleased with it (hence the four stars, which should be 4.4, but I rounded). For what it is (an mp3 player) it is great. The video and photo playback are fun little extras, but not a big selling point. I highly recommend this player to anyone looking for a flash-based mp3 player.
ONE MORE THING...
removable memory is cool...if 8 GB isn't enough for you, then you can throw another 2GB in (as soon as the price on microSD cards comes down a bit :)
Customer Review: Meets Expectations
Summary: 5 Stars
We have bought four of the E200 series players (two of the 2GB, one 4GB and now the 8GB), and they are superb. The sonic quality is fantastic. You will want to upgrade the headphones, but that is true of anything you buy where the headphones are tossed in for free.
The E280 has the greatest capacity, at 8GB, which is big enough to store 2,000 songs. That is more than enough for me, and with the expansion slot you can add up to another 2GB. Micro SD cards are cheap, so that is definitely something I will consider when and if the time comes.
As to the player...it has a sturdy build, even though it is of a diminutive size. One thing you will want to do is purchase a case and screen protector, to prevent scratches to the front (especially the screen). Well worth the cost, and there are plenty of them out ther.
In addition to playing music (which is why I bought it), it has an FM radio, and can store photos and play videos.
Operating the Sansa is pretty much intuitive. My player is refurbished (which just means that Sansa opened the packaging, updated the firmware, checked everything out and stuck a sticker on the back...it is brand new, but comes in a plain box w/o the CD manual or lanyard). The menus are well laid out, and everything is controlled by the four buttons around a circle in the middle, which is used to toggle through the menu selections, and to also control the volume once the music or FM radio is playing.
There is not a lot more I can say about it that you can't learn about yourself by reading the other reviews. One thing I will mention is that the customer support could be better. I called Sandisk and immediately reached an operator who tried to walk me through the issue that I called about. The issue was that after I copied and pasted albums to the Sandisk after ripping the albums to the My Music folder, the album art wasn't brought over. There was a simple solution (first set the USB mode to MTC), but he made it seem complicated, since his solution was to edit every song of every album in Windows Media Player and add the album art. I suppose I could have figured this out on my own before calling, but I expected that the techies at Sandisk should know more about the product than I do.
My recommendation is to buy one and enjoy the music.
Customer Review: Warning to fellow nerds: Do not buy this online!
Summary: 2 Stars
First off, if you're only interested in playing music, have 8GB of it, use Windows Media Player to manage your music and don't mind DRM crippleware, this is a five-star piece of hardware for a five-star price. My review and rating are intended for people like me who want (and expected) more.
DO NOT BUY THIS PLAYER ONLINE. If you want full nerd functionality, you must check the box in person. Here's the deal: The original Sansa e200 series supported Universal Mass Storage mode (Sandisk calls it MSC, Mass Storage Class), to allow transferring arbitrary files to and from the device. It could be used as a media player *and* a portable storage device; I originally found out about it while running searches against "UMS". I needed UMS so I could connect it to my primary computer running Linux, and I chose to spend the extra on the 8GB version because I could also carry around non-music files on the extra space among my Windows, Linux and Mac boxes. Although the default firmware's OK if you use some user-created utilities, I also intended to put Rockbox on it for OGG Vorbis and better playlist support.
Nope. I just now found out that my device is a version 2. Version 2 players are crippled down to only support Windows Media Player's MTP (Media Transfer Protocol). The device will only talk to Windows Media Player on a Windows box, and will only transfer DRM-scrambled music onto it - no other files. Isn't that nice? This is exactly the kind of nonsense I wanted to avoid. It also has a different processor from v1, so even if you go through the contortions to trick it into sort-of connecting through a hardware backdoor, Rockbox won't run on it.
Apparently version 2s add a "v2" after the model number on the actual package. I bought from Amazon Marketplace; neither Amazon nor Amazon Marketplace (yet) make any distinction between the functional version 1 and broken version 2. Buy a v1 in person, and you'll have probably the best piece of hardware on the market right now - aside from not talking to anything my player looks good, feels great and runs like a dream. I know I'm going to be looking around for a v1. Just don't make my $120.00 mistake - Sandisk is reneging on their marketing by selling two very different machines under one model, and stores don't know to distinguish between them.
Customer Review: Great little player
Summary: 5 Stars
I finally decided to replace my ancient (I got it in 04) MP3 player. Back then I payed 70 dollars for a 256 meg MP3 player. A month ago, when I got this, I paid 120 for an 8 gig MP3 player. Moore, eat your heart out.
Positives: The capacity. 8 gigs is a lot of music. Using the expansion slot, you can add 2 more gigs with a microSD card for cheap (I got a 2gig for 12 bucks). This nets you 10 gigs of capacity for 130 dollars or so--with a flash player. I have 2,000 plus songs on mine. It isn't my whole collection, but it's a good enough amount of music to last a while. 2000 songs translates to probably over 100 hours of music.
The fact it's flash: it doesn't skip, and battery life is better than HDD based players usually manage. Very useful for the gym, or for use in my car on rough roads (using an adapter to play it over the radio). I haven't run down my battery yet, although my use hasn't been too heavy (I bring it to the gym sometimes, use it on my lunch break, or when I'm driving).
The features: Some people scoff at FM tuners in MP3 players, but I actually use it sometimes. Not all the time, but often enough to be glad of it. Same goes for the voice recorder.
The interface: wow, easy to use! Very easy to access different features, sync files, etc. I'd call it as easy to use as an iPod, maybe more so. The buttons are responsive, the scroll wheel works well, etc. Great ease of use (which is very important).
Good sound quality. I don't know that it's the best out there, but I'm listening to 192 kb MP3s on 30 dollar earbuds; I don't think that I'll get better sound without first shelling out major bucks for high end headphones--and for my uses that's really not worth it.
The bad:
If you use the expansion slot, it has to search the card every time you turn it on, which takes a few seconds. Annoying but not terribly so.
The included earbuds suck. Pick up some decent Shures or Koss or something; they sound much better.
I've been happily surprised by how good these are; I only picked them up because the WalMart I went to was out of the 8 gig Nanos, but the office store nearby had these on sale. Color me impressed. For the price, and features, and capacity, this is an amazing buy.