SanDisk Sansa e280 (8 GB) Digital Media Player

My wife and I shopped around throughout 2007 for a portable music player and found a couple that seemed perfect. We tried a Creative Labs ZEN Vision M and our daughter is on her 4th ipod. The SanDisk Sansa e200 series topped them both! Selling points were the user replaceable battery and the built in FM radio.

PROS:
1. Perfect size and weight, feels good in the hand.
2. Great display.
3. Great sound. (Has presets and custom EQ.)
4. Easy to navigate. The buttons and wheel have a click feel so that you can navigate while the unit is in your pocket.
5. Easy to load music. You can drag/drop files using Windows Explorer or synchronize music to the Sansa using Windows Media Player. Either way, the player will read each songs tagged data so that you can find a song by artist, album, genre or title.
6. No special software is needed to load songs to, and from, your Sansa. Audio tracks are not converted into a propriety format as with ipod and Zune. A file can thus be transferred between a PC and your Sansa, (in either direction - to or from), without loss of quality.
7. The Sansa e200 series can also display pictures and play video.
8. The unit has FM radio built in.
9. Includes a microphone to record voice memos.
10. The rechargeable battery has a long life and excellent time between charges. If it should fail, the battery can be replaced by the user. I believe ALL other manufactures require you to send the unit in for a battery replacement (for a substantial fee!).
11. Great reviews from both ebay and Amazon. Owners are very satisfied with the e200 series portable multimedia players, more so than for ipod, Zune, ZEN and even the newer Sansa View.
12. Flash based memory means INSTANT access from one song to the next, even in random mode. There is no clicking sound while waiting for the next track as with hard drive based units, also less moving parts with Flash Memory so less to break.
13. Micro SD memory card slot built into unit so that an entire different play list of songs, (or video), can be played without deleting some tracks to make room for the new ones. I can keep a Micro SD card on hand for different moods.
14. Playlists from Windows Media Player can be transferred to the unit and played. Great for a shared device so I don't have to listen to my wifes' Brandi Carlile in the mix during random play and my wife does not get subjected to my Grand Fund Railroad while on random play. We each play our own playlist on random play so every song is hand picked!

CONS:
The packaged ear buds, while sounding great, can get uncomfortable after awhile.

For a list of software types that the Sansa e200 series player can play, visit: http://www.sandisk.com/sansa/f​aq/faq18.asp

BOTTOM LINE:
Still one of the best portable multimedia players you can buy. User satisfaction and dependability much better than competitors and this unit is even better than the newer Sansa View series.

The SanDisk Sansa e200 series multimedia player is one of the best and easiest to use media devices on the market. There is no need to convert music to proprietary file extensions and the unit comes with an FM receiver. The unit does not need to be sent in to the manufacturer for battery replacement, you can do this yourself should the battery stop recharging properly. It has 2 to 8 GB of flash memory, not hard drive memory, so no clicking or waiting between songs, (great for random play mode!). It has great sound and a nice color display.

Pros: It is small and easy to use. It syncs up with the computer very easily. Inexpensive and has a FM Radio, MicroSD slot allows some great expansion.Battery life I have found to be really good as long as the 20hrs suggested by Sansa.
Sync with Media player's and create playlists.
Voice recorder built-in Mic works real well.

Cons: Movies must be converted first.

Summary: I think over all this is a great buy. I would definitely suggest this to some first time MP3 buyers. It has all the features and enough room at 8gb and an expansion slot.

This is by far the based flash-based mp3 player in the world, and has more features than any available ipod. This mp3 player can do it all, it has music that is easily managed with its Rhapsody Jukebox and also comes with a video converter to convert almost ANY video format into a special compact but good quality video file for your Sansa. I recommend the 8 gigabyte version due to the fact that you wont have to buy a micro-sd card (though you can) to expand the powerful device. Note that on the SD card you can only store music files, no video. But isn't 8 gigs enough? I was able to put 15 FULL movies onto my sansa along with about 320 songs, and this thing is so small it was like the world in my hand. I utilized the other features that were hard to find like the FM radio when I wanted the weather forecasts/news and the voice recorder for quick memos and even recording of my acoustic guitar once. I never used the photo viewer much but tracks that had album covers looked great when I had all of my info with each song. But what is the best thing about the player? The Rhapsody service is included as a 6-month subscription with units purchased from certain stores (bestbuy and circuit citry I believe) and what it does is give you access to millions of songs, and can automatically update your Sansa withe the top 100 chart songs of Rap, Rock, county, etc. The last AWESOME detail that puts this at the top of the mp3/mp4 player market is its battery life. In 2 weeks I had to charge my sansa ONCE!!! The battery lasts over 20 hours sometimes even with your video playback! That is amazing and on top of that you can replace the battery on your own EASILY for less that $20!! Say good buy to the ipods 60 day 100 dollar fee for a new battery! The design and compact make of the player also makes it great to travel. NEVER FREEZES! Buy this mp3 player if you want a great deal and features. You can find it for under $130.

Note: I didn't use the original firmware at all, I immediately installed the Rockbox firmware, so this review may not accurately represent certain aspects of the player when using the default firmware.

As stated above, I immediately installed Rockbox. Since I was already familiar with the interface, it only took a small amount of time to get used to the controls. The scroll wheel works fairly well. I would like for it to be a bit more stiff and have more distinct jumps, but I find it to be be more precise than an iPod clickwheel. The buttons around the wheel are rather annoying to press, and they don't have the best tactile feedback in the world. Honestly, the buttons were the weakest part of this player.

I found most of the audio functions to be decent. This device uses a PortalPlayer PP5024 system-on-a-chip, which makes it somewhat similar to older iPods and iRiver devices (like the H10). Thus, it has decent audio quality. Since this player does not have a hard drive, it does not have as many noise issues. For instance, the FM radio is crystal clear on my semi-decent headphones. (Those $20 Sony studio can ones) The only time I noticed noise was when the flash memory is being accessed, but after the music buffers, the noise goes completely away. I think this is mostly due to Rockbox's habit of buffering a lot of data to RAM, so the stock firmware may constantly have a low level of noise in the background. The volume levels are decent, but I always find myself in the -35dB to the -10dB range. (the range is from -73dB to 6dB) so this player doesn't have a whole lot of power to drive really nice, high impedance headphones loudly, but it's not too much of a big deal to me.

The screen seems to be one of those vertical orientation sensitive ones. By that I mean that one shade of color (particularly grays) on screen will look different depending on the angle the screen is at. And, since this screen is rotated 90 degrees, just looking at the player normally (since your two eyes are on different angles relative to the screen) is kinda trippy at times. I only bought this device for music, so that's not a big deal either. Unfortunately, this display is purely backlit, so it's not too terribly visible in the sun, unlike my iPod Photo, which was transflective and could be easily seen in sunlight, or even in a decently lit room with the 'back' light off. Again, not too much of a big deal, most players are like this, and a high contrast theme makes the problem go away for music playback. Just don't expect to watch movies on the beach decently with it. :)

Battery life is decent, and I can get a few days of moderate use out of it. It's also replaceable by taking off the back four screws which is really easy to do. There are also quite a few sellers here on eBay that sell replacement batteries, though I haven't seen anything larger than the stock 750mAh batteries. :(

I have not yet had time to test the MicroSD card slot, but Rockbox allows you to use MicroSDHC cards while the original firmware does not. (Basically, Rockbox lets you use cards that are 4GB and larger.)

To sum it all up, if you expect this player to perform decently with music playback, you won't be disappointed.

I've used iPod Nanos, and I bought my girlfriend a Microsoft Zune. These are expensive quality MP3 players that are on the market today, but are they really the best, and are they really worth the amount of money their price tags say?

The simple answer after buying an 8GB Microsoft Zune and an 8GB SanDisk Dansa e280 is NO, buying a major namebrand is never really that worth it. I did like the Zune - yes. Does it have features that the Sandisk Sansa e280 doesn't have? No. The iPod, Zune, and Sansa have the same basic features [for the most part], just a different interface, and different software.

The Sandisk Sansa e280 is a great value. I was able to snag mine here on eBay for about $50. Compare that to the $150 I spent just last January on the 8GB Microsoft Zune! That's a huge savings of about 66%!

I love my Sandisk Sansa e280. It has PLENTY of storage space for all of my MP3 songs that I download (I only have about 400-500 songs, but this thing can hold thousands - maybe even more). The interface is very easy to use and navigate through, but setting a playlist and/or shuffling music will take time to learn. Wait, screw that, let me just how you how to in this review. You can enable shuffling by going to the settings menu - it's located in the same menu that you see "artists", "songs" etc...and for creating a playlist, well you'll just have to do that on your computer.

The software that comes with the Sandisk Sansa e280 is alright. I don't think it's as good as Microsoft's software for the Zune, but it gets the job done. It's called Rhapsody (by RealPlayer) - I'm not sure if every Sansa gets the Best Buy version of the software application but mine did. I guess the only difference is the Best Buy logo, and a free trial to buy music - it's similar to the iTunes store, though not as bad as an interface (I hate the iTunes program).

Transferring music from your computer to the Sandisk Sansa e280 is fairly simple; it's just different than other software applications for other mp3 players as mentioned before. Instead of selecting or highlighting the songs you want, or right clicking an individual one and selecting a "Sync" option, you have to drag the song(s) onto the mp3 player icon for the songs to sync onto the mp3 player. It's not difficult, just a bit awkward IMO, but still easy enough.

As for getting songs, well you have two options. You can buy mp3s directly through the software application for the Sandisk Sansa e280, or you can download songs through your favorite p2p application - FrostWire is recommended as it is the fastest p2p application as well as the safest, with the largest network of users and files to share. Of course if you use that, you'll be downloading "back-up" songs to your computer, right? ;] I'm sure you already have the CDs...you just want to make sure? ;]

When it comes to the Sandisk Sansa e280's music playback quality, I've read some negative reviews on the web. Let me first just tell you that the quality of the music will really depend on the earphones you use, and not the mp3 player itself! The earphones that come with the device, or at least mine, had "alright" music quality - not nearly as good as the Zune or iPod's standard earphones. Thankfully though, I had a set of earphones from my Samsung Instinct [cell phone] manufactured by Samsung and it drastically improved music playback quality to phenomenal. I can hear every instrument in the song; so get good earphones.

This is mp3 player a GREAT value!