SanDisk Sansa Shaker (512 MB) Digital Media Player

I had bought this for my 2 yo daughter who loves to listen to music and dance, but is too small to wear headphones. It is small, cute looking, resistant to breaking, has a built in speaker, is relatively easy to use even by little fingers and uses swappable SD cards. I was able to store dance music on one card, and bedtime music on another and use on on trips. Music through the built in speaker is acceptable for the size of the single mono speaker. Music played through the jacks (it has two) is actually very good (equal to an iPod).

As a product idea, it's great. However, on implementation, it has several design problems. First, it will only work with certain SD cards which are cheap, but there is no list that says which will work and which will not. I could not get it to recognize Kingston SD cards or generic ones. Second, the SD card needs to be re-formatted with the card in the player via a PC connected using the supplied standard mini-USB cable. It uses a single AAA battery for power. Using it exclusively with the jacks (headphones or external amplified speakers) you can get close to the rated 10 hour battery life. However, using the built-in speaker, the battery life is very poor, as short as 30 min with low volume. If you turn up the volume to so as to hear it several feet away, battery life is as short as 15 min. Since the battery life is so short, there is no low battery warning -- it just stops playing and will not turn on again. The player is small, but they could have easily designed it to hold a AA battery instead of a AAA, which would provide substantially longer battery life.

So if you intend to use it with it's built in speaker, make sure you get a set of long life rechargable NiMH batteries because you will be changing them frequently. Changing batteries is relatively easy but something that only an adult or 10 yo can do. If you intend to use it with headphones, choose a different palyer.

I first encountered this product when looking through portable media players for my 2 year old daughter. There were very few, if any, that had an external speaker. My daughter will not keep headphones on her ear or head nor do I want her to wear them out of fear of hearing damage. We came across the SanDisk Sansa Shaker at Toys R Us and gave it a try. Having extensive knowledge of computers and MP3 software it was easy for me to just plug the card into my card reader, drag and drop the mp3 files to the card and put the card back in the player. My daughter took to this MP3 player very quickly. The audio output on the external speaker is clear and the volume control on the external speaker is great.

For a two year old it is difficult to change the music or to initiate the song changing feature by shaking the player ( you have to hold the play button then shake it. Additionally it uses 1 (AAA) battery and that does not last very long at all. It is highly recommended to keep a pack of AAA batteries in your car when the battery goes out.

On a positive note this does satisfy my daughter's desire for music while we are riding in the car. Now we do not have to play her music over the car speakers and two adults can hold a conversation in the front without having to overcome the music from the car speakers. Additionally this frees up your car stereo so you can listen to your own music or news program while your child listens to their music in the back seat.

The option to have a memory card over internal memory is fantastic and makes removing/adding music much more efficient but I would love to see this device with a rechargeable batter with a longer life span. If that would mean having to remove the card slot and use internal memory then that would be fine.

So in conclusion if you are looking for a portable MP3 player for a toddler to make your car ride easier then this is what you have been looking for!

I absolutely love this product . . . my 3 and 6 year old daughters loves music, but having to wear ear phones just wasn't working for them; they're young and full of energy, so all the dancing and jumping around just caused the ear pieces to fall out. This is the only mp3 player I've found for kids that has a built in speaker, so they don't have to worry about wearing the ear phones. But, if you're looking to use the ear phones, this is great, because there are two ear phone jacks!!! Great for those who have two children! The design is "kid" appealing with it's pink or blue color. Also, very easy to use for the little ones. Great for parents as well, with the easy drag-n-drop feature when it's time to load songs onto it! Love it, love it, love it! The only downfall with this product is that it goes through batteries pretty quickly. I recommend buying rechargeable batteries for this product.

I was looking for an affordable and easy to use music player for my kids and the IPod was out of my price range. Oh Boy! Did I find it!

This player is so neat!

I bought the Model: SDMX9N-102 which comes with with a 1 gig scan disk removable memory card AND you can add more memory with a larger SD flash memory card if you choose.

It only weighs about 3 oz but my kids have knocked it around thier backpacks and they are built to take the beating.

Very, Very, (did I say Very?), EASY to use....even I could figure it out! The kids love that when you want to change a song all you do is give it a little shake and wahlaaaaa.....New Music~!!

Takes 1 AAA battery and ours is still working after many many hours of use. The box said 10 hours but I know it has been longer than that already.

The earphones are the little bud kind, but my kids love to sit it on the desk while they are studying and listen through the build in speakers. They are not Bose quality ~~ but my kids could care less, they love this thing.

Shhh.....don't tell them....but I am going to start loading a disk with mp3 books for myself while they are at school...great player! I highly recommend it!

All my music is saved in itunes, and apparently not in MP3 format. I am researching how to change format so my daughter can listen to more than just the 8 or so pre-programed songs. This is no fault of the seller. I saw things had to be in MP3 format and did not think that it would be a problem.

The device is a bit smaller than I thought it would be, and the bottom it a little difficult to get back on once you have it off.

I bought this for my 2-year old for the external speaker option since I don't want her to be using ear buds this early in life. She steals my iphone all the time to listen to music. I hope getting this for her will save my iphone. I just have to figure out how to change the music formatting.