Customer Reviews

SanDisk Sansa Shaker 1 GB MP3 Player (Blue)

5 star:		(52)
4 star:		(28)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Length:: 3:50 Mins

I bought the shaker for my nephew who is slow and has difficulty with hand, eye co-ordination. The mp3 player he currently owns he is unable to control the volume and change the songs by himself. He also has difficulty turning the mp3 player on & off that he has now. With the shaker when you turn it on it makes a "clip clop" noise like a horse. When you turn it off it sounds like a drum roll winding down. My 10 year old daughter tested it out & loves it. I am certain he will be able to enjoy himself and use this device on his own. I am now buying this for my 10 year old & my other nephew as well. I have shown it to many family & friends and they're buying them as well. This is great for kids & adults.

Pros:
We bought the shaker for our 1 year old. She loves it. Almost everything about the unit is awesome. The aesthetics are cool, the volume is good, the controls are simple.

Cons:
The battery/SD cover seems to be a loose fit and could potentially come off too easily. While it has not been a problem for us, our little girl has not taken it off yet, I predict that when she figures that out, it'll be a problem.

IMPORTANT:
If you want to use the random feature, don't bother getting the 1GB version but save your money and buy the 512 Mb version. You won't be able to fill it up AND preserve the random feature. The SD card MUST be formatted as FAT (not FAT32) and it is then limited to around 120 files/songs in the root directory. If you take steps to getting more than 120 songs on there, such as format as FAT32, or creating folders to put additional songs in, then the unit will still operate, but the random feature will stop working and it will instead just go to the next song. I spent a long time discussing this with SanDisk technical support until they admitted this limitation in the product. Don't get me wrong, SanDisk and the Shaker ROCK, but until they solve this bug/limitation, save yor cash and get the cheaper one.

I got this MP3 player for my 4 year old son. It does what I wanted: It plays lots of different songs that he likes, with the ability for me to get rid of ones that annoy the grown-ups. It does so while minimizing the dangers of using headphones on a toddler (both hearing and stranulation). It is a fairly primitive and limited device, so don't expect it to replace your iPOD.

Pros:
--Small, comfortable to hold, good sound, lots of capacity, easy to setup (only file manager drag and drop is available) through either a card reader or the included USB cable).
--Has support for two headphones (not included). I didn't try this, but with my two boys, this may come in handy for car trips when they're older.

Cons:
--It can get quite loud, and when the speaker is pressed against the ear, this cannot be good for hearing, certainly no better than headphones.
--Hard for a 4 year old to operate. The button is a little difficult to push, and must be held down for a couple seconds to do anything but pause the playing (leaving the device on and consuming batteries of course). Try as I might, I cannot convince him to hold the button long enough while shaking to shuffle tracks, he just says it doesn't work.
--Shuffle (hold button and shake) doesn't actually choose a random track, it just skips a few (1-3?) tracks in the playlist. When my playlist has 1000 items in it, and it comes to the dreaded "Country Music for Kids" section. It takes a dozen shuffles beofore even moving to the next album, not what anyone with a grown-up media player would put up with. PS: the playlist appears to be determined by the order which windows copied the files, not by any sensible order.
--The MP3 decoding is buggy. Occasionally (maybe 1 in 20 tracks) it will play a track vveerryy sslloowwllyy. At first I thought it was due to the sampling rate of the track (it only supports the standard CD rate), but upon skipping ahead and then re-winding, the track is back to playing normal so it is an intermittant bug. This happens even on brand new batteries, so it isn't in the below list.
--It eats batteries fast, and when low acts erratically. Some of the signs of low batteries: will not turn off, shake mechanism no longer works, or shuts off unexpectedly. Two weeks after Christmas, and I've already recharged the battery twice (Duracell NiMH 1xAAA). It doesn't help that my kids put it in pause mode instead of turning it off, but still.
--The end cap isn't perfect. In two weeks, it only fell off once, and that was when I was using it not my son. But it shouldn't fall off at all, or the little brother has access to both a AAA battery and a memory card for chewing on. If it is at all targeted for kids it should have the screw on the battery cover that is on every kids toy these days.
--The included music is 4 kids songs and 4 classical songs, nothing too spectactular, but ok demo music until you can get to a computer to delete them.
--The CD included is a waste, PDF version of the 8 page user manual.

Conclusion: Buy it for yourself to listen to when you don't want to wear headphones (car, desk, bed, etc), put only your most favorite playlist on it, and lock your kids in another room when they play their leapfrog toys that play the same 5 songs over and over and over and over again.

Purchased this for a 9 year old and it is just great for the price. Picked it up for $30 delivered with 1GB of memory. Would highly recommend for someone looking for simple MP3 player. No screen, but well worth it for kids requesting MP3 player.

My daughter received this for Christmas and was hooked right off the bat. Easy to use. The little speaker is a huge plus since I don't want her with ear plugs in her ears all the time and they don't fit well anyway to small ears. Battery usage is as described - though given it's popularity still means that we are chewing through batteries. Get rechargable batteries...

The Good: I bought one of these when they were still fairly new for my 7 year old and it was the only one on the market that had a built in speaker. Not having to lug around external speakers so that others can enjoy it is HUGE. When my daughter ran across a song she liked, she could easily share it with all of us - lots of fun in the car. Shaker mechanism works good, and frees you up from having to decipher and manipulate tiny controls just to change songs. Intuitive interface software works great to load and manage songs. Size is excellent - just small enough to be portable, large enough to not get lost easily. Controls are intuitive and easy to use. Battery life is great.

The Bad - The unit will unexpectedly change songs, skipping ahead or back at random. It doesn't matter if it is sitting still on a counter or in your hand, it will often skip while you are in the middle of enjoying a song. I contacted Sansa support (email only, grrrr!) and they did get back to me, suggesting I basically "reboot and rebuild", which I did. I re-loaded songs from the original CDs, reloaded the library, did the little reboot/refresh routine they outlined. It seemed better, but the problem persisted. I exchanged it, and had the same issue with the new one. After a year or so, my daughter kind of gave up because of this annoying issue. Her friend had the same problem with one a few months newer, so there are three I know of that had this issue.

Overall, excellent product with a great design, IF it didn't randomly skip.

This player is easy to use. My wife loaded it with music in minutes and my 3 year old mastered the controls in only one session.

Pros:
- All memory is in the removable SD card. You should buy the 512 Mb version and buy your own 1GB SD card separately if you need more space ($3 at my local computer store).
- Requires no special cables.
- Rugged - it has been dropped several times with no ill effects.
- Very small.
- Built-in speaker so the kids don't have to mess with wires and I can keep track of the volume.

Cons:
Not rechargeable. It does not turn off on its own, so it will drain the battery if my kid forgets to turn it off.

We have had this player for a week now and my 6-year-old daughter loves it and so do I! It comes straight out of the box with everything you need - USB cable, earbuds, SD card, strap and carabiner for easy carrying, and even a AAA battery. I skip the USB cable, as I would rather pull the SD card out and use my card reader to transfer music. Using the USB cable would eat battery power from the player anyway.

The 1 GB card gives more space than any kid would need for their favorite songs. You can drag and drop mp3 files onto the card or synch using Windows Media Player, the latter of which is what I ended up doing because I could create a playlist for my daughter with her favorite songs on it. It was easy for her to learn how to operate the twist volume and forward and reverse controls at the top and bottom of the player. It took a little more time for her to master shaking the player to skip to a random next song, as you have to press and hold the play/pause button while shaking it. Since the targeted age is really 8 years old and not 6, this wasn't surprising, but after some practice, she has it down and now loves to shake to the next random song.

The kid friendly qualities of this player are what make it shine. I'm not keen on letting my daughter get into the headphone thing yet, so I love that this device comes with a built-in speaker. It actually doesn't sound bad, either - certainly good enough for kids. The cute sound effects it makes when turning on and off and shaking to the next song also make it appealing to the kids.

I would highly recommend this player to anyone looking for an affordable starter MP3 player for their elementary schooler. I have been very impressed and my daughter has great fun with it.

My daughter age 9 wanted an Ipod for Christmas. Will searching the internet I came across this item. She had heard of it and I had seen it on the Today Show. I thought the item would be more age appropiate and I was right. She really loves it. It is very easy to use, directions for setup is easy and it just made an all around great gift.. I would definitely recommend this product to others with children that are in that between age...