SanDisk Sansa m250 2 GB MP3 Player (Black)
by SanDisk
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List Price: Our Price: $59.95 You Save: $90.04 (60%) 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 m250 2 GB MP3 Player (Black)
Customer Review: Solid Player with a few Idiosyncrasies
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a four star player out of the box. However, with a free Mediamonkey download, you can make this a five star player. First, let me start off by saying that I have owned an Ipod and other popular mp3 players in the past. I have probably gone through four different music players in the three years. And in the course of dumping my money into both music and hardware, I found this Sansa player to be a diamond in the rough. Why? :
Pros:
1. Removable AAA battery - You can get the fanciest mp3 player but in about a year, expect to shell out another hundred bucks (or so) for a new battery. You can also do it yourself, but that's not the real problem. How about when you want to listen to your player all day at work, while commuting, or while camping? If you use your player on a regular basis or where a power is scarce, battery life is the limiting factor. It doesn't matter how many songs the player holds if it doesn't hold a full charge or the battery can't be changed on the go. This Sansa will have an excellent battery for the life of the player. Just buy another four pack of rechargeable AAA batteries. It only takes one to power this baby. No getting stuck with a player and only one battery. The people who review audio players on Amazon rarely do so six months later when their battery only holds half the charge. Do you really want to pay for a new player next year because of the battery?
2. No special adapters needed - Guess what? All you need is a USB cable (which is included) to transfer files. I lost my adapter for my IAudio player a few months ago and I couldn't charge it or transfer files for a week. I had to wait for a replacement to come in the mail. Yet another way some other companies make a killing off the consumer (you). They'll make you buy proprietary cables. Not here.
3. No DRM - I like my files to travel with me. No restrictions on what computer I can use my player on or what I want to do with my files. It also support subscription services and windows files. It also comes in handy as a flash drive for presentations and files. Apple forces you to use only ONE computer with your player.
4. Flash Based - No more waiting for an internal drive to find my song. I hated the lag with my Ipod and Iaudio player when selecting a song. Being flash based, it also helps the battery life if you like to skip through songs. Being a guy, I like to skip through my songs like I do my TV stations. With a hard drive based player, this type of skipping will drain the battery quickly.
Cons:
1. Poor software - This is why this player only receives four stars. Don't even waste your time using the installation disk or Windows Media player with this thing. It will cause you to lose your mind. Instead, download Mediamonkey for free. It will index your player and Windows will install your files for you. ***Important*** Even though the manual and Sansa website shows that playlists are supported, it may be a mystery as to why they don't appear on your player. Here's how you do it. Using Mediamonkey, Right click the Sansa Player --> go to Properties --> go to Synchronization Properties --> and ensure that copy playlists is checked with " \Playlists\ " in the destination directory. The player also needs to be in MTP mode while this is done. Settings --> USB --> Auto Detect. This will solve any headache that you may have in automatically entering playlists onto the player.
2. Clicking Sound - when scrolling through playlists, you will notice that the music breaks up slightly during playback.
3. No Alarm - I wrote to Sansa asking for an alarm feature in their next firmware update. It would be nice to wake up to some music.
Both good and bad:
1. Armband: The include armband is thin and functional. However, it's not that attractive. I spent an additional $[...] on the silicone liner. Now sexy's back.
2. Thick and light: This player is ideal for runners. The controls are strategically placed with large navigation buttons. It can also sustain much more wear and tear than an Ipod or a hard drive based player.
3. Monochrome screen - a color lcd screen would be nice but by having a simple interface with no frills, the battery lasts much longer and it lowers the production cost.
4. Small memory size - Even at 4 gigs, the largest Sansa m200 player can only store 5% of my music collection. However, I found that after buying this player (to hold me over until my 60 gig player was serviced) that I really don't need all of that music with me all the time. I began to discover my songs all over again with a smaller capacity player.
5. Backlight - I think the backlight is bright and the screen is very clear. However, when using rechargable batteries, about 15 hours into playback, the backlight turns off. This tells me that I only have a few more hours of playback left.
Customer Review: Not so flexible player especially for MacUsers
Summary: 3 Stars
The player has good sound and the ear buds are OK. I do prefer the less tangly heavier wires of Apple iPod ear buds. The control buttons seem robust and nearly flush with the surface so inadvertent presses are unlikely. The hold button works as expected. The shutdown requires a long press which is a nice feature for similar reasons. The included case is a bit cheesy plastic, and it does not come with a lanyard, but has a hardware loop for attaching one.
For MacUsers, you simply plug the player into the USB port and drag MP3 files from iTunes or Finder windows into the player icon on the desktop or into its Finder window. For PCfolk, Microsoft WMP software is apparently supported (I am a MacUser, so I cannot attest to that). The minidisc that comes with the player has PC software on it...so I cannot comment on that either.
The player will ignore the fact that you have grouped music files in folders. It does not recognize or organize iTunes playlists. The player manual has no instructions for MacUsers. According to SanDisk support folk, unless you are willing to use Microsoft products (WMP), playing by playlist is impossible. However there is a workaround that I figured out for myself.
The workaround is to edit the entries in the Album or Artist fields for the iTunes information for each file...because the player will play by Album or by Artist...before loading them into the player. The iTunes Grouping field is NOT recognized by the player as one might hope. The default Play All of the player plays all of the tunes on the player alphabetically by the song Title field regardless of the other field entries.
I would have preferred that the player recognize files in folders as belonging to a playlist. My old iRiver had that feature.
The player is somewhat hard to use at first mostly because if you stop the player by powering down, it will start up continuing from where you stopped it. But if the player gets to the end of the Album or Artist list of files and naturally stops on its own, pressing play will not restart the player. You have to power down and restart, open the menu, and then select what to play from the menu again. Otherwise the player seems to be frozen, showing a track but not able to start playing it, and no amount of clicking of buttons (play/pause, skip forward, skip backward, stop, or select) will get it to play the file shown on the screen. It seems frozen...until you power down. This was VERY frustrating in learning how to use this player, and the manual does not detail this "feature." So you can expect to need some experimentation to get comfortable with this player.
I would have given this model two fewer stars because of all this difficulty of use, and the failure of the company to support MacUsers, except for the very low price of the player. It is a bargain in terms of memory capacity and price at the time of this review (12/2008).
After losing the battery compartment cover of my iRiver unit and the fact that iRiver could not supply a replacement, I strongly urge users of this SanDisk player to keep the cheesy case on the player or to purchase the much nicer silicone skin which I have reviewed elsewhere.
Customer Review: Feh, I'd rather have something else.
Summary: 3 Stars
The SanDisk Sansa M250 is at best, a middle of the road MP3 player. I purchased this bugger shortly before the holidays as a little gift to moi, wanting an upgrade of my older, crappier 512mb player (of which I had infinite trouble, but I digress). I saw it had 2GB, and thought to myself, "Alright!" Some people complain "Aw, man! Only 2 gigs? Lame," but it's enough for my purposes, and a fully loaded memory slot can hold quite a lot of songs. It doesn't have a slot for memory cards, so you only have 2 gigs, period. There are functions for the radio, recording sound yourself, and listening to audio books, but I don't care about any of these to try them out. You might, though, so consider that before you buy it.
The battery is a simple AAA, and is hot-swappable on the fly, and only limited to the amount you have on hand. It lasts about 19 or so hours ideally, but the more songs you have on it, and the longer the backlight is on drains the battery faster. I usually never have more than 100 or so songs on it, but I'll pile more on if I was going somewhere. On the surface it seems adequate, but I have more than a few complaints, though.
The interface is interesting. The songs are listed alphabetically, by song title, but can be broken down into artist/album/etc. However, if your MP3s are not listed properly, the m250 will scatter them about your playlist like so much confetti. It's a real pain to have to go through your entire library and make sure all your files are listed correctly. But that's just me. Maybe a prospective buyer likes randomness in his/her songs. My old player added the files on as you copied them, but lacked the "nifty" subdirectories. But it still allowed me control as to what I wanted to listen to when I wanted to. You can't delete the songs on the fly, but have to do so when the player is plugged in. That is, if your player doesn't do so first (see below).
The battery usage is buggy too. If the battery gets too low certain functions stop... er... FUNCTIONING. The backlight is first to go, making it difficult to navigate in the dark. Then cascade failures happen, and the player freezes and becomes nearly useless until a new battery is installed.
Recently, my hungry little Sansa ate my ENTIRE LIBRARY OF SONGS. I plugged the [...] back in to realize there were no songs on my player, yet memory had been consumed. Was was once 1.89 gigs is now, permanently, 1.29. The firmware update is also useless as I currently have the latest version, and SanDisk has yet to resolve my problem (it's been four weeks already). Their customer service department is less useful than a case of syphillis. They tend to ignore you and your problems, their way of saying "Thanks for buying our product." I've not been able to solve this problem myself at this time. The instruction manual is little more than toilet paper, and offers no help beyond turning the thing on and off.
All in all, this is a Re-Gift to myself more than anything. I let my brother have it, and I bought a much better player that has yet to cause me anguish.
Customer Review: Nice player, just a few minor quirks.
Summary: 4 Stars
This player is all that I need, which sums up what you're getting. The Sansa M200 series is short on bells and whistles, so don't go here if you're looking for photo and video support, or fancy animated menus. It has a monochrome LCD, but it is more than adequate for viewing player and song information. Battery life is great, I routinely squeeze about 18 hours out of a standard alkaline AAA battery, albeit with minimal usage of the backlight. The backlight does what it needs to do when used in dark or low light situations, but it does significantly increase drain on the battery. My one most significant complaint about the player is that the backlight seems to stop functioning once the battery level gets below about halfway, although this problem appears inconsistently; sometimes, I get the backlight to come on when the battery level is very low.
Sound quality is very good, I use a pair of Shure E2c in-ear phones and I don't see a significant difference between the Sansa and my previous player, a Creative Zen Micro. Since I took a cut in memory capacity going from the 5 GB Zen Micro to the 2 GB Sansa, I typically compress songs a bit more than a I once did, but the difference in sound quality is not significant (or even noticeable?) when compressing to 96 kb/s.
The player fits nicely in your hand, and the admittedly weird looking placement of big buttons actually works out very well, especially if you use the player for exercise and want simple play-back-forward controls that don't require stepping through multiple menus. Build quality is a little toylike, I recommend always using a form-fitting case since I'm paranoid I will one day lose the flimsy battery door. Sandisk supplies a pretty chintzy plastic case and armband, with the case feeling like it was cut from an old raincoat. It does, however, provide some protection for the unit. I now have a Sandisk silicone case, which looks nicer and includes a beltclip. The original armband can still be used with the new silicone case. One other beef about the player is that considering it's thickness, it tends to do a fair amount of bouncing if you strap it to your arm during an activity like jogging. Still, it has never fallen off when using either the original plastic or the new silicone case, nor do I worry that it will.
Navigation is simple and straightforward, and it is nice that the player recognizes MP3 and WMA tags. Audiobooks work reasonably well, since the player will start where the track stopped prior to powering off. Unfortunately, there is no bookmark feature, so you cannot easily resume an audiobook if you play other tracks between listenings. One feature I truly miss is the ability to create playlists on the player. I believe you can do this prior to syncing, but I now just listen to individual albums or artists, manually changing when I'm looking for some variety.
All in all, this is a simple player with easy navigation and excellent sound quality. Add a slightly nicer silicone case, and this is the perfect companion for travel or exercise.
Customer Review: Feature-filled MP3 player
Summary: 5 Stars
I recently got the Sandisk M250 MP3 player for a present, and I absolutely love it! It's really simple, yet it's full of features that I have come to appreciate a lot. I'll give you my pros and cons on this player, starting with the cons, because there's not very many of em.
Cons:
--included USB cable is only 6 inches long, and can pose a problem for those who have USB ports in the back of their computer.
--included case is adequate, but it's a pain to put in and take out the player. The case is made of a soft plastic that sticks to the player, making it a pain to use. I got the silicon case, and itis soo much better; it is very easy to take off and put on, and also provides better protection for the player. I found it easier to press the buttons on the player with the silicon case on.
--backlight is on the dim side, and could be lighter, but it's good enough for me.
--does not have a clock, like other Sandisk players. I would just like one for convinience.
Pros:
--large tactile buttons have excellent response, and are easy to press.
--4 line display gives a lot of info (track name, artist, album, battery life, time elapsed, and time left).
--text on the screen is very large, and easy to see.
--very good sound quality (to me)
--runs on AAA batteries, giving me the option to carry several batteries on long trips. I bought a pack of rechargeable NiMH batteries to cut down on costs.
--has a stopwatch, and it can run while you play music. It's ideal for me, because I can listen to music and time myself when I go running.
--has a info section that tells you how much memory you took up and how much you got left. It divides it down into your music memory and recording memory.
--FM radio has fairly good reception and you can preset 20 stations. Certain stations are as strong as I hear in my car's radio.
--lightweight, even though it is not really thin like other MP3 players.
--has custom EQ that you can mess around with along with several other set EG like Jazz, Pop and Rock.
--you can alter backlight timer from 3, 5, 10, 35, 45, 60 sec, and always on options.
--you can mess with screen contrast if you got weak eyes.
--supports languages Dutch, Spanish, English, French, Italian, Netherlands, and others.
--powers up or powers down in about 4 seconds; far better than my old Rio Carbon which took 10 seconds to boot up.
--navigation is soo darn simple; it's all done with the main buttons on the front.
--dedicated volume buttons prevent the inconvinience of having to go into the menu to change the volume like on other MP3 players.
--this player can get really loud; using my Philips surround sound earphones, I rarely listen to my music above 1/3 level, even in noisy places.
--voice recorder; I don't use it, but it's nice to have it as an option.
I hoped this review helped!