When it comes to MP3 players, I've been through my share over the years. One of the things I love to do most on a beautiful day is go for a long walk, soaking up the rays to the beat of my favorite
musique du jour; and MP3 players certainly make that a lot easier to do.
My first one, a
Rio Rave 64 MB model, didn't hold much music, and I had to carry along an FM radio receiver to make it through my walks. As time went by, I wanted more and more space, doubling my capacity with a 128MB
Seal SFP150 , doubling it again with a 256MB
Philips Shoqbox , upping the ante considerably to a 4GB
ipod Mini , then finally settling on a
30GB Philips GoGear that I still use today.
I tried to pass on my experience to my son, who is almost 18 and at that age where he can't do anything his father tells him to do, when he was in the market for an MP3 player. And of course, he went his own way and bought a Sandisk
Sansa e260 4GB MP3 player.
Initially, at least, I thought he had made a good buy, paying $159 for the player at Best Buy. This was about $40 cheaper than an ipod with less disk space and fewer features. But we started to have problems with the player almost immediately, causing John Jr to rethink his purchase. We will, of course, elaborate on that as we break down the e260 little by little.
Design The design of the player is compact, sleek, and functional. The unit is about as tall as a pack of cigarettes and half as wide and thick. About half the front is taken up by the LCD screen which provides very sharp color and detail. The other half sports a click wheel control that is an improvement on the ipod version: it's easier to grasp with your thumb and navigate. A large button in the center of the wheel allows you to go to the current selection on screen, and a small one to the bottom left is the power control that also doubles as a "back" feature to the previous screen.
A record button on the side activates the voice recording feature, a key lock button is on top next to the headphone jack, and the interface that accepts the USB cable for interface with a PC is on the bottom.
Use The e260 is very easy to use. We liked the easy to navigate menu. The main screen offers the following options, which you can easily rotate to and choose from with the click wheel. As you turn it, each option will rotate into place to be selected. Choose from:
Music This option allows you to browse and play songs loaded on the album. You can browse by artist, album, songs, genre, playlists, or your own ratings.
Rhapsody Channels Allows you to download and play recorded Rhapsody content with subscription.
FM Radio Photo You can store and view standard image files up to your available space limitations.
Settings Adjust equalizer, set auto-shutoff intervals, set brightness, update your account, and see available space.
Voice Make and playback voice recordings.
Video You can playback small video files up to your available space limitations after converting them through the supplied Sansa software.
Again, the Sansa e260 is very easy to use, especially when playing your music. Once you select a song, the wheel allows you to raise and lower volume levels, pause, and resume play. A small image file will display an album cover, track progress, time of day, time remaining, and battery level; another click will first show EQ levels, another will bring you a full-screen album art shot, one more and you can get complete track artist and album info.
Loading Music All of your music must be loaded through Rhapsody. Rhapsody will convert accepted file formats to compatible tracks for your player, from a CD, or you can buy them through them online either individually or with an "unlimited" track subscription.
Sound Quality We liked the sound quality of the Sansa e260. With the supplied headphones, it sounds good enough, especially when you've set the equalizer to suit your personal taste. Replacing them with my preferred pairs like the
Philips SHE9500 or
HE-592 yields much better results.
Problems Sadly, with all of the good must come some bad I suppose, and we have had our share of problems with the e260. The unit comes pre-loaded with a number of music tracks. We're not sure how good they are, though, because they wouldn't work when we brought the player. Instead, the player displayed almost no available disk space-and no content. Sansa tech support had us reformat the drive, and we lost all of the music.
The Rhapsody file management has been another issue. We got a month's free use of the unlimited service with the player and a few free permanent tracks. When the subscription ran out, the permanent tracks refused to play as well, and Rhapsody tech support was pretty much useless getting them to play.
Even the tracks we create ourselves from CDs occasionally get "lost" on the player, and we have to reload them. What's more, we have never been able to get videos to play as they should. Tech support says this is because the software identifies the player as an "e200" rather than an "e260. A download of software and disk sent by Sansa still have not solved the problem.
I am not so much concerned about the video issue, since videos suck up drive space anyway. Still, it should work, and the fact that they don't distresses John Jr to no end. He just loved the fact that his player did something mine didn't.
Overall Bottom line is that John kept the player, and he still uses it today. Still, playing around with the unit myself, I find that it's had too many issues to give it a rave review. Combined with tech support issues, I can't recommend the e260.
