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: This is some headache-causing hardware!
Summary: 2 Stars
My beloved Zen Micro Photo's hard drive died, but thankfully, I had Big Box Retailer's extended warranty on it. Unfortunately, they no longer stock that unit, so I had to pick out another one. The Sansa looked like the best out of the bunch: Small, high-quality screen, video playback, high capacity, flash-based, and most importantly, it had a built-in voice recorder.
Almost from the outset, there were problems. I don't use any online music services, so having Rhapsody foisted upon me was an immediate annoyance. The media manager application had a propensity to randomly crash, particularly in the middle of file transfers. Not good. The design felt very badly thought out, with a mechanical scroll wheel that feels rough and gets stuck (I see why Apple dumped them!), and buttons that are tiny, hard to press, and don't feel like they're being pushed when they are.
But the real deal-killer for me was a problem I don't think many others will experience: I have a great deal of music whose filenames and ID3 tags are written in Japanese characters. The Sansa's US firmware does not support Japanese (and other Asian languages as well, I'd assume), and as a result, the player will choke whenever it's asked to play a file with even one Japanese character in it. Since about half my music library fits that description, and it would take forever to go back and manually rename all those files in English, I was extremely annoyed. Perhaps a firmware flash would fix it? I tried to get some firmware of Sandisk's Japanese site, but they don't have any direct downloads. Maybe the newest US firmware has Asian language support, I thought to myself. I found the firmware, unzipped it, and loaded it onto my player.
Dead as a doornail. Tried it again. And again. And again. At that point, I just gave up.
Some people don't seem to have any problems with this. Well, more power to you, I guess, but based on my experience, this is NOT something I would recommend. If you're in the market for an iPod alternative, Creative's units still offer the best combination of features, functionality, and design.
Now I just need to figure out what I'm gonna buy after I return this thing.
Customer Review: Rhapsody killed my Sansa
Summary: 4 Stars
The Sansa E200 series is a very nice MP3 player. However it comes with a reccomendation to use Rhapsody, and as well Rhapsody can be a very nice service in and of itself. If you combine the two you can very easily cause a firmware error that will embed and prevent you from accessing it Via computer, formatting or really interacting in anyway. I bought the Sansa E260 and used Rhapsody it was good at first , I've used Rhapsody for years. However I decided to upgrade to the subscription service of theirs Rhapsody To Go, I didn't sync my Sansa in 4 days and tried to play my non Rhapsody music it glitched and became junk. Sansa says nothing can be done, however if I can find the serial number they will replace it and Rhapsody refuses to help or refund in anyway. By the way the playlist thing, It doesn't have an operable way to put playlists on without windows media player and I'm still not sure if it just dumps all the songs into a folder ie a file that should be 20kilobytes can become 200 megabytes. Not alot of info out there about that. Anyway I may get mine replaced however I will never use it with Rhapsody or a subscription service again. Its just not worth the hastle I have wasted more hours trying to fix it or get help to fix it then it would have taken me to earm enough money to get another and have some cash to goto a movie and get sushi and beer. In short Sansa good, other than the playlist and that might be good still not really known, Rhapsody very very very bad with Sansa. It can and will kill your device and unlike Sansa they will not help you. They will not refund your account. Rhapsody cost me 215 dollars between the subscription the MP3 player and the case. What do I get back for them destroying it? "We are sorry the issue can't be resolved." I can't really give it a rating I did really like it alot while it worked, it functioned well the little ring selector took a bit of time to get used to but works much better than you would think. I would probably reccomend this device to someone who wants a good mp3 player or viewer, really photos and videos I thought looked great on it. For the price and the functionality it is very nice, maybe the best on the market.Customer Review: great hardware, but flawed software
Summary: 1 Stars
Revised assessment: 2 stars.
I have field recordings that I add tags to by hand. The sansa organizes navigation and selection of songs via the tags, and these have to be perfect. I'm not sure if tag errors could cause this problem: I go to play one song and another from a different album plays, then when that's done the tail end of the song I selected plays, then the device locks up. I upgraded the software and it didn't fix the problem, but the next time I connected to the computer the sansa went completely dead, so I had to call support - the answer was to hold a button down for 15 sec, put it in lock mode, hold down the power button & while doing so connect it to the computer. Support is easy to reach and doing a reasonable job considering the software they are supporting and the fact they can't see the problems directly. One bit of advice was to use Windows Media Player, though that couldn't help tag bugs I think.
In one case I figured out, I had added an extra space to the album title in a song's tags, so it appeared as another album. In another case, I put the name of the song in the artist's name. These were easier to figure out than displaying one album while playing another, which so far has me baffled.
These factors may not bite you if your music has good tags.
So far it's not been worth having 8GB because I wound up reformatting it repeatedly to get whatever I wanted to hear at the moment to play w/out a problem. Now I'm slowly adding albums one at a time, debugging each, so may succeed in filling it someday.
The hardware is beautiful and the radio is a nice feature. It's staticy for me, but in an area that also has bad cell phone reception too.
I think I would have trusted an ipod more because of the reputation. As it was, its flaws led me to blame it for some of my own mistakes. So I would update to 2 stars if I could. Still it does not inspire confidence and my hope is in a future firmware upgrade.
A feature I would ask for is the ability to navigate by Windows folder rather than tags. This is what I was used to on an Archos which I filled to 20 GB without problems.
Customer Review: Great machine, but not without its flaws
Summary: 4 Stars
As most of you have realized, this is most likely Sandisk's answer to the Nano. With a sleek, slim, design, this has a lot the iPod doesn't have, but also has a lot of bad things the Nano too, doesn't have.
SOUND QUALITY - Not bad. Very acceptable; the earbuds could be a little nicer for a high end flash player, but they do just nice. The bass is a little heavy, and midtones are softer than they should, but at full volume, your ears won't notice much of a difference.
INTERFACE - Pretty nice. Icons are clear and concise. I had no trouble getting through each of the devices many features. More on features will be later in the review.
DESIGN - Not a fan. I do like how it has the expansion slot; because of the extra expansion slot, it gives the device the potential for the largest capacity flash player on the market, at 10GB. Whether or not you need 10GB, or just want to upgrade to a hard drive MP3 player, it's up to you, but when it comes to flash player, this packs a lot of bang for the buck. I like the idea of the button layout and spin wheel, but it often gets stuck, and the plastic feels cheap. It smudges, but not as much as the Nano (1st gen), and it much more difficult to scratch. The back is made out of some really durable metal alloy, so it feels safe to drop, although I wouldn't recommend it. Light, sleek, thin, bright/vivid screen, great looking device, but has quirks.
FEATURES: Large feature set. Supports a lot of media inputs, including subscription services, and also has built-in FM tuner, which gets decent reception (all FM tuner MP3 players have pretty lousy reception, so don't expect much). Voice record and FM record are nice features, and it also plays videos. With a battery life of 20 hours, it remains in the upper groups of its class.
BOTTOM LINE: If you are not a fan of the whole Apple trend, and want a feature packed alternative, this is the way to go. If you want amazing quality, excellent sound, tons of accessory options, better looking design, and a thinner, more compact MP3 player, the Nano is your choice. It really depends on if you like iTunes or not.
Customer Review: Nice Little guy
Summary: 5 Stars
I have been researching buying a new Mp3 player for months. I wanted to upgrade to more memory from my Iriver (512mb). I selected the Sansa 8mb over Zune and Ipod, because it has FM tuner, recorder, and memory card slot for extra memory. The other two players do not. Transfering music is very easy and the sound is great. The menu buttons are easy to navigate. However, There are a couple of things I didn't like. (see below)
1. I purchased the player from [...] and it died after two days. The menu button got stuck and wouldn't stop rotating the menus. It would not even shut off. So, I let it run all night until the battery died.
2. When I am in the FM mode listening to the radio there is no stop button to stop the radio and return to the main menu. I had to get to the main menu an select music then turn off the player.
3. I wish Sand Disk would have included either the plastic or leather case, especially for the price paid for this item. The case included is cheap and non functional.
4. The earbuds included fall out of my ears. Fortunately, I have a pair of sony earbuds that work better which I had purchased to replaced the earbuds that came with my Iriver player.
5. The actual menu buttons could be little more prominate. Sometimes when I press the buttons I have to press them again because the buttons are so faint. I guess I just don't press hard enough.
6. The system works well with WMP, however, I use Music Match and had no problems downloading songs. The downside is I can't transfer playlist with MM. I can only transfer playlist using WMP. I have to export the playlist into WMP and it doesn't get all the information correct.
7. As note make sure your player is in MSC mode when you have card in the slot. That way you will see the card as a separate drive in Windows. I load songs on it and swap the card back and forth with my cell phone.
I really think this is a very nice player and If your buy it you will enjoy it. The color screen is really nice. I read some where that this player works well with Yahoo Music Player.