36 out of 37 people found this review helpful.
The Crappiest MP3 Player of All Time for Life in the History of the World!
Date of Review: Dec 3, 2007
The Bottom Line: Crap
I've had my share of crappy MP3 players in my day. From iPods not holding a charge after a couple months of having it to players with broken headphone jacks almost immediately, I've probably gone through at least 15 MP3 players. Never has there been an MP3 player to completely crap out so completely and so quickly as this one.
First thing to be broken: The Scroll Wheel
Scrolling to what I wanted to listen to was such a pain in the butt that at times it was worth just keeping the thing off. When you try to scroll down, the thing is often not advanced enough to figure it out where to scroll. It will start to scroll down and then eventually start to scroll up. The only cure to this was scrolling extremely slow, and sometimes that didn't even work.
Second was the freezing
This thing freezes more than any other MP3 player I've ever seen. It literally freezes about once out of every two times you use it. Sometimes you can turn off the device by holding down the power button, but often that doesn't work and you have to use the reset tool and wait for it to reboot and figure out what happened, which can take an upwards of a minute.
Then came the sound problems
About a week after I bought it, the sound on the left side of my headphones went out. Usually that means that means that your headphones crapped out on you, so I went out and bought some new headphones, with no thought that it was actually the Sansa that's left side didn't work. I got back from the store and plugged in the headphones. I turned on the music and didn't hear the left side. I then almost through the Sansa across the room, but my doggy was there, so I refrained.
So I listened for a few days to only the right side of songs, but then the right side started to go out! Now to hear the song well you have to turn the volume almost all the way. I wouldn't be surprised if the right side went out completely soon.
And then came the battery problems
One day, when I charged my Sansa all night long and the battery was dead when I turned on, I felt something may have been wrong with the battery. It's quite odd, sometimes the Sansa player holds a charge, sometimes it doesn't. To get a full charge you generally have to charge it for a couple of hours. When I first got it the battery lasted probably around ten hours on a full charge and now it lasts only a half an hour to a couple hours, providing you can get it to a full charge.
The Poor Sound Quality
The sound quality, right from the get-go was pretty sub-par. It didn't sound clear like most MP3 players, but had an odd muffled sound to it. If you put it in your pocket and the headphone jack spun around, you would hear a lot of static. It comes with a USB cable to charge, but you can get an AC adapter for it.
The Expensive Price
The Sansa is actually quite expensive. It's not a budget MP3 player. Retail price on this piece of junk 2 GB is 89.99. Definitely not worth it, especially when you can get some of the best quality 2 GB mp3 players for less than that.
What Music Formats Does it Play?
The Sansa is compatible with MP3, WMA and WAV
PlaysForSure?
Yes the Sansa is a PlaysForSure device, which is definitely a pro if you want to use one of those services, but there are much better PlaysForSure devices such as the Creative Zen Microphoto.
Radio
The Sansa has a built in radio, but most of the stations come in with a lot of static.
Video
The Sansa has a high quality screen, so the videos look nice, but who is going to want to watch a video on such a small screen? Plus, the thing is 2 GB... even a small video is likely to take most of the space on it.
Voice recording
Yeah, uhh, well you can record your voice with the Sansa. I'm not sure why, but you can! The voice record feature works all right. The voice recording quality is actually pretty good.
User Friendly
The thing has an easy interface, and there aren't a lot of buttons, so it should be a really easy system to use, right? Well the stupid scroll wheel makes something that would be really easy and well done pretty crappy.
Should you get it?
NOOOOOO. Don't buy this! It is utter crap. Almost everything that could ever go wrong with an MP3 player has gone wrong with this piece of junk. It may look cool. It may be small and sleek and weigh 0.2 oz. But it's crap
