Wishlist fulfillment Phase One: the Sandisk Sansa

Update: June 9, 2006

Sandisk has certainly been busy in the 12 months since I bought this. Their Sansa series has expanded to its M200 generation, which comes in 512MB and 1Gb capacities, like the Sansa E140 Series(reviewed here, of course), but also goes to 2GB and 4GB as well.

In the last couple of months, they've released the Sansa E260 generation as well, which comes in 2Gb, 4Gb, and a massive 6Gb capacities. It has received good reviews, and has put the company out of the bargain-basement department.

My trusty Sansa E140 continues to roll on, though. Though I've had a couple of problems with the scroll wheel, they've managed to iron themselves out over time without my having to call Sandisk. My five-star rating still stands because this player has SD expansion capability, which might actually keep me from getting the higher-priced (but considerably prettier) E260 series for some time.

The price of 2Gb SD cards has fallen to the point where it would be a pretty smart alternative. The price of the player has dropped considerably too, and can be found online, for $80 or so, with even better deals at brick-and-mortar stores like Best Buy and Circuit City (the latter has a particular fondness for offloading Sandisk players on the cheap).

Another plus point is the fact that the player takes regular AAA batteries. The peace-of-mind feeling that comes with knowing that you won't have to trash your player because its battery died, even though the rest still works, is unparalleled.

I’ve been looking for the perfect mp3 player (‘perfect’ being constantly re-defined with successive disappointments) ever since the endless marketing campaigns for the Apple Ipods, Rio Carbons and Creative Zen Micros finally penetrated my force field of defiance. It also didn’t help that I had an unhealthy dependence on music itself, and desperately needed something to pass the time during long commutes or dull workouts.

The choice is supposed to be clear, right? A 20 GB 4th generation Ipod all the way. I won’t deny that currently, it’s probably the most reliable multi-function player available on the market (though competitors like Cowon seem to be catching up). However, the Ipod wasn’t right for me for several reasons. I have a crippling fear of hard disk players. I’m not what you might term a particularly ‘active’ person, but before I put my money down on a player, I want to make sure I can take it anywhere I like and most importantly, use it for any and all purposes (except swimming, duh), without worrying about whether the slightest vibration could dislocate the hard drive head, and leave me with a $279 paperweight. A visit to ipodlounge.com’s support forum will show an alarming number of users who have had problems with the player during even mildly active use. The price was another issue. I’m not sure if I agree that the brand name Apple has built up for the Ipod should allow them to charge as high a markup as they do, especially considering the added charge of replacing the battery when it eventually dies out.

I then turned to the Creative line of Zen players, in particular, the Xtra, Touch and Micro lines. Each one, however, had one or more major flaws that kept me from purchasing them. The Xtra line offers a 30GB player for $180. The gigabyte-to-price ratio was almost enough to convince me to abandon my mobility requirements and ignore its considerable size. It’s ugly side: the warranty lasts 90 days, its manual explicitly warns users against using the player during physical activities, and a large proportion of the players all seem to have a faulty headphone jack, which seem to turn up soon after the warranty expires. Of course. The Touch was slightly more expensive than the Xtra, but suffered from the headphone problem as well, along with playback problems. And finally, in no player was the headphone jack problem more widespread than in the Zen Micro, so despite its sleek come-hither looks, I passed on that as well.

It was at this point that I found myself to be OK with the significantly lower capacity of flash players, and began hunting for one. IRiver and IAudio were too expensive for me, given the low megabyte-to-price ratio (partially explained by the considerably higher cost of flash memory). Many others available were flimsy looking no-name brands, or expandable players (which was a key feature for me) by RCA or Rio that ran on Stone Age firmware, and exhibited baffling design flaws such as song limits. I really did not want to go for the Ipod Shuffle, even though it was quite budget-friendly (though, I can’t imagine what they would have charged if it actually came with a screen). Buying it, I felt, would be giving credence to a genuinely abysmal marketing push (‘Life is Random’) for what was supposed to be a high-quality product. I finally settled on the recently released Sandisk Sansa line, as I had been eyeing its Digital Audio Player line, as it had received significantly fewer complaints than other flash players in that price range.

The Sansa is wider than its DAP cousins, and definitely not as compact as the Shuffle. It measures at 2.165" x 2.913" x 0.551", which is basically a tiny bit wider than a Samsung Cingular cell phone, significantly shorter, and of course, much thinner. It’s width can be attributed to the fact that it has a slot for SD cards and can support up to 2GB of external, skip-free flash memory this way (a big plus for me). The unit weighs about 1.8 ounces with the battery, and hence is very, very light. It supports both USB 1.1 and USB 2.0, which was important because my laptop, while only about 30 months old, is stuck with three USB 1.1 slots. The player also features an FM tuner, and support for MP3, WMA (another plus), protected WMA, and Audiobook files. M4A format files are not supported, though. It also comes with a one-year warranty, boosting the ‘whew’ factor significantly. The LCD has an attractive blue backlight, is large and clear and easy to read.

I’ve used the player extensively since purchasing it a month ago, and am happy to report zero problems, playback-wise. I was encouraged to review the product after reading CNET’s unflattering opinion of its sound quality. I find no problems with it whatsoever, and for picky listeners (who are unlikely to be in this price bracket anyway, but everyone likes a bargain, so…), the player provides several options to tune the sound to the users’ liking. In areas with loud ambient noise, such as a subway, or a construction site, the sound may drop to unacceptably low levels, especially for those not using noise-canceling earphones. The player has an SRS WOW feature that basically acts as an amplifier to counter this, and is useful for temporary use. It’s quite battery intensive though, and should probably not be used for long stretches of time. The Sansa also has an adjustable five-band equalizer which works well, as well as standard presets like rock, classic, jazz etc. It also has options for TruBass, SRS 3D and FOCUS. The sound quality I get is identical to that from my laptop, using the same headphones. Of course, mine aren’t great, and provided that you use a decent pair, I’m guessing you will be satisfied with the quality, as I am. I chose not to use the included earphones because the rubber suction cups began to hurt my ears after a while.

One of the best features of the player is that it seems to have been tailor-made for active use. It comes with a transparent carrying case, that at first, I had a lot of trouble with. The player has a plastic outer casing that contributes to its low weight, but gives the impression that it’s flimsy, which it’s not. That was basically why I struggled to get the player into the case, as pressing the buttons to close the case involved putting pressure on the surface of the player, which made me nervous at first. But the player turned out to be remarkably sturdy, and I can slip it into the case every time with ease now, despite the tight fit. The player’s buttons are very tactile, and are accessible while the player is in the case. The included arm band makes it easy to use on runs, and a useful stopwatch function on the player makes it ideal for outdoor sprints. The player also has a Hold button to prevent buttons from being accidentally pressed should you choose to keep the player in your pocket. Battery life is very impressive. The included AAA battery definitely lasted more than twelve hours, though your mileage will vary based on how often you skip songs, fast forward or rewind, and the format your files are in. I converted my existing Mp3 files to WMA 9.1 files at 48 kbps, in order to fit in more songs. While 240 songs at 128kbps at 4 minutes each are likely to fit on the 1 GB model, close to 640 songs of equal average length would fit if encoded at 48 kbps. It’s generally understood that at lower bitrates, WMA files provide better sound quality, and indeed, as yet, I have not been able to tell the difference between my original MP3 files and its converted WMA duplicates (I convert files with the free DBPowerAMP converter, available at www.dbpoweramp.com ). The tradeoff? WMA playback seems to tax the player’s battery more than MP3 files do, and ever since I filled my player with WMA files exclusively, I have been getting fewer hours on the battery. That said, it could also have something to do with the quality of the rechargeable batteries I am now using (RadioShack). You may get better performance with one-use AAA batteries.

The Sansa has an FM tuner, which worked with no problems. However, I didn’t fool around with it much, because, quite frankly, I despise normal radio fare, and digital FM was not the reason I shelled out extra to get the larger capacity player. The headphone jack can also be used to plug it into a cassette adapter, which allows the player to be used in a car, though there isn’t a DC out jack to connect to the cigarette lighter for power. However, as mentioned, the player’s quite power-efficient, and performs well on a cheap AAA battery. It also needs absolutely no software to load files and music (though they are included), as Windows XP recognizes the player as an external drive. It can also be as a portable storage device. Using an SD card is supposed to tax the battery a little bit more, but I have not had the chance to test that theory yet. The carrying case, once you get used to it, works well, and protect the SD slot from popping the card out during a workout.

Minor quibbles: It doesn’t support playlists, and hence, you can’t have specific mixes for working out, or walking the dog, etc. A bigger problem is that, aside from not supporting folder navigation, albums will not play in the correct numerical order, (it will play in alphabetical order instead) unless the track numbers are in the song ID. For example, ‘Song 1’ may play after ‘Song 7’, but will play correctly if the songs are titled 㢥 Song 01’ and 㤏 Song 7’ in their respective song ID tags. It’s definitely something I mind, and hope will be fixed in a firmware update. If you’re not as concerned much about track order though, the player does a fine job of allowing users to select individual albums to play through, or choose by artist, or song, or even miscellaneous options like songs that were added in the last day, week, month, etc. The player also does not have a recording function, which several of its competitors do. The player also does not connect directly to a USB slot, but rather by a generic USB cable (USB 2.0 A-Mini 5-Pin B; included). I have no problem with this, but it could be an issue for those prone to lose things, or those who plan to use it for transporting data frequently from one PC to another.

So, in conclusion, I’m very satisfied with my purchase. My research has paid off, though it’s sad to see that other players in this price category perform so poorly in relation to the Sansa. Kudos to Sandisk for choosing to cater to the budget conscious like us. They’ve done an excellent job with this player.