Customer Reviews

SanDisk Sansa View 32 GB Video MP3 Player

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I purchased this device because I wanted to have a large quantity of MP3s on hand, at one time. This is my third MP3 player... my first was 120 GB using a Hard Drive from a laptop. It had the space for everything in my collection, only it couldn't shuffle the entire list without taking 20 hours to load it... I had to create playlists for albums, artists, or any variation I may want to listen to in the future... what a drag! The second was a 2 GB interim device that I used while waiting for tax time to purchase a new device. 2 GB without shuffle is not a place I want to go back to!

This leads me to my decision to purchase the SanDisk Sansa View 32 GB player. It has a solid-state drive, faster access to the information means I can shuffle though larger playlists and skip a song I might not be into at the moment. I can play my entire 32 gigs on random with this device plus the incorporated information from the expansion card (I have an 8 GB).

I did not want an iPod, Zune, or any other device that made it hard to move information. The Sansa View allowed me to open it as an MP3 player and drag and drop files right onto it. That is great, some friends had to put each CD into the computer... I already had my music ripped and organized with the Tags the way I wanted them. I do not want to start all over and am glad I did not have to. I upgraded the firmware right away as was suggested in the reviews that I read before I purchased. Didn't have any of the glitchy problems that were of major concern. It's lightweight and sturdy. I also got a clear case to go with it right away to keep the screen from getting scuffed. All in all, I use it constantly, and have even fallen asleep with it on a few times.

The cons and the stuff you way want to consider: While I like the device, it does have some interesting quarks that need to be addressed. Most of them are firmware based and can be addressed. I doubt that they will because it looks like SanDisk is moving on to other products and companies rarely go back to address the concerns of it's users. If they do... it would make me a customer for life!

When you plug it into your computer the LCD screen comes on with a circle stating it's connected that constantly spins in a circle to let you know it's not frozen. It stays that way the entire time it's on your computer... never sleeps to save the screen... never turns off so it seems unnecessary to tax the screen so much while it's interfaced with the computer. It shows you it's charging the battery while the screen is on. It would be easier if it had a one of the blue navigation lights blink and go solid when the charging is done and when you spun the dial it would wake up the LCD screen.

The software is easy to use but has one tiny annoyance. To properly play movies and view pictures you need to use the software to translate it for the correct screen proportions. It will only do this while the device is connected. So again you have to plug your Sansa View into the computer and watch the LCD screen turn and turn while it spends hours translating a movie. I got a new movie that had a "Digital Copy" included. I dropped it onto the Device and it said it would run better if translated. It took several hours to do this... that is common to translating video files and not Sansa's fault. But the Device had to be connected the entire time. I couldn't just run the translation on my computer and then drag it on when it was done. When it's complete I can drag it off the device in case I ever need to format it and will not have to go through this problem... if they simply just allow the software to run independently from the device being plugged in, it would save wear and tear... and I can listen to my music when I'm away from the computer while it's doing all the work.

It will allow you to create playlists... just not easily. You have to highlight all the files you want in a play list then right click and select "Create Playlist" You cannot create a playlist by dragging the files you want to a list and saving it from there. It's rather tiresome to hold down the CTRL key while going through a list of several thousands songs. One mistake and you have to start all over. I tried to select all and create a playlist that way... so I could remove what I didn't want and it froze the device. The biggest issue I have is when I turn the device off and then come back and turn it on... it picks up where it left off but it is sluggish and doesn't skip to the next song very well... or might stay on one song for 30 seconds before registering the skip request. If you select the playlist again or the "Play All" option, it responds the way it normally does and you are fine until it's turned off.

File navigation is through rotating the dial... on long lists it takes a while.... so you have to ask yourself, how often you want to scroll to a specific song and play it. The more you select specific songs, the longer it's going to take. It uses the Tag information to separate the music by artist and album automatically, so I find that very helpful!

One great feature is that when watching a movie, it will allow you to leave a bookmark to pick up where you left off. I am glad they added that feature... but fast forwarding and rewinding is extremely slow. It would be nice if they had variable speed... if the device freezes or if you forget to bookmark by mistake... it will take about 30 seconds to fast forward five minutes of video. You can only have one bookmark per movie so you can't bookmark three areas of the same movie... it just keeps your progress.

The addition of a memory card slot is really nice. Two things with that... when you push the card in, it will lock in place. Push on it again and it will eject enough to be removed. There's no safety and I have accidently pushed it without knowing and found the card in an easy position to be lost. It would also be nice if they would allow you to copy the information from the card to the internal memory. Say you are on vacation and fill your camera card. It would be an excellent feature to pop the card in and copy the contents to your device to free up space on your camera.

My last few small observations are that it will not let you pick a picture for the background. You can choose a color or have it randomly change it each day. And you do no have any "tools" to use for the internal drive. I cannot defrag the information, nor can I run error checking on the drive.

I realize that this is a long review and it also includes my ideas to make the device work better and be more versatile. Of all the reviews that I read before buying it, this is what I wish I would have seen. I might still buy it but I'd have more stuff to ponder and other devices might have come to the forefront on features. It still came down to Cost and Storage Space. I went out on a limb because I trust the SanDisk drives I've been using in my cameras for years. Just seems like they need a tiny bit if work in the software (firmware) department. Luckily, that's something that can change after shipment, where crappy hardware cannot.

I dropped two stars because of the constant LCD usage, the limited playlist creation ability, and having to start a playlist when the device has been turned on and off where it would be nice to continue where you left off.

**Update - 11/05/2010** One more item: I've had this for a while now, and it's FULL. One drawback is that it can take up to TEN minutes to load! Ten freaking minutes is too long. As I mentioned above, there's no utilities to try and fix the problem. I still use it daily, I just wish it didn't take so long to start up. I turn it on and I'm already at my bus stop before it loads. If I take it in the car... I have to wait until it loads (usually while I'm driving) to make a selection.

I have a e280 and like that one but I love the View. The e280 has frozen on me several times and often takes a prolonged period of time to access the file I want. I have not had any problems with the View. It turns on quickly. Moves from one section to the next quicly. And your chosen file comes up quickly.

The menu wheel is smoother than the e280. The View has a better screen. I like the distinct on/off switch on the side which also acts as the hold switch. Accessing files including external memory card is very easy. I have no complaints.

This is a reasonably well-thought out product that stumbles when it comes to use as an Audible player. It does not consistently return you to the right place in the book you were last listening to.

Compounding that deficiency is clumsy navigation: fast forward is momentarily non-responsive, then works at a snail's pace for 10 seconds or so, then speeds up the point of being almost too fast to manage.

I am still hopeful that a firmware upgrade can address these issue; the current downloadable one does not.

For non-Audible, non-video use, my only reservation is battery life that does not seem to be anywhere near that which was promised.

Four stars for MP3-only use, two stars for exclusive use as an Audible device.

I've had my 32GB View for about two months now, and am actually on my second one, after having the first one replaced by SanDisk under warranty. The player works great for music (I have not tried downloading and viewing videos) except for one major flaw that I have experienced on both my original player and now my warranty replacement player - it takes over fifteen minutes to boot back up after it has completely shut off.

By way of explanation, I'm running the latest firmware (as of 1/1/09), have the Power Saver mode turned off (set to 00 minutes), using a SanDisk 16GB MicroSD card in the expansion slot, and have synced about 20GB of 192 Kbps files to the internal memory and about 10GB to the expansion slot using Windows Media Player 11 - pretty standard stuff and what I thought the player was made for.

A search of forums shows this slow booting to be a fairly common problem. Contact with SanDisk support results in nothing more than a replacement of the player, only to experience the same problems with the new player. At this point I'm not sure if I've just gotten two lemons, or if there are serious firmware problems involved. However, based on my experience and what I'm seeing on forums, I'd suspect the latter.

I'd recommend steering clear until forum activity indicates this problem has been resolved by improved and functional firmware.

I received a new Sansa View for Christmas as a replacement my beloved (if troublesome) Rio Karma. The Sansa is spiffy looking, sleek and slim and lightweight compared to my old player. However, the absolutely abominable user interface kills this player for me.

You cannot create playlists on the fly. This was a feature I had gotten very used to with my old Karma. Furthermore, you can't create playlists with your computer easily, either. Every program, every method I have come across on various forums have not helped me in the slightest. I have 30GB of music on this thing and no way to organize the songs except by album and artist.

Which leads to the next problem, scrolling through song or artist lists. The Karma had the option of going directly to a specific letter in the alphabet. Not the Sansa. If you want to play a song by Yaz, you have to scroll past all the other artists beginning with the letters A-X first. Obviously, given the amount of music you can fit in a 32GB player, this can be a time-consuming chore.

There are no bookmarking features, except for audiobooks purchased through Audible. I listen to a lot of Old-Time Radio shows and new BBC radio dramas, and I cannot reliably save my place in the middle of a program while using the Sansa.

Finally, the Sansa takes about ten to fifteen minutes to refresh itself every time I unplug it from my computer. This makes it very difficult to check if your playlists are visible to the player or not, for example, when working with the player in MSC mode.

I used to listen to my Karma nearly every day. Thanks to the issues I described above, I haven't trotted out the Sansa more than two or three times in the three months I've owned it. The Sansa could be an excellent player, but unless these software headaches are solved, I won't be using it enough to find out.

PRO: huge flash memory, long battery life, large(r) screen, ease of use

CONS: no user replaceable battery, no scroll-through

This is my fifth Sansa - the most previous ones being the 16GB View, and the e280, at 8 GB capacity. Most of my review here is influenced by a year's use of the e280, plus about 8 months' use of the 16GB View. ([...]). Of course, 32 GB is double or quadruple what I was used to, and enabled me to load a huge amount of music. The case size is a bit thinner back to front than the e280, but almost an inch longer and about .75 inches wider. The scroll wheel is much better designed with a "hit" button right in the middle, and the wheel also can be depressed at four corners to initiate commands (back, forward, etc.). While some users found the wheel in the e280 "flimsy" or "rickety", the wheel on the View feels solid and rotates much more smoothly and evenly. All commands are initiated via this wheel, the central "hit" button, and the menu button just above and to the right of the wheel.

In detail: Like my e280, both Views operated perfectly right out of the box - they came (like the e280) with the hold switch "on"; I knew to unlock it before turning it on. Inside the box were the unit, the ear plugs, the USB cable (30-connector special to the Sansa series, including the e- and c- series), and literature. Also included was a mini-CD with the user manual in about 15 languages. The unit came pre-loaded with a few pictures, songs, and videos; they were NOT visible at all when USB connected to my computer. I erased them by a simple command on the View, something not possible on the e-series.

I use the View strictly as an MP3 player - no videos, no talking books, no voice recordings -- so all of my evaluation is specifically done as a music listening source. I include in this the FM radio, which I use quite a bit. And at the outset I must say that I have NEVER used the ear plugs supplied with the View; I always use a behind-the-neck over-the-ears headphones such as the Koss KSC55 or Sennheiser PMX100. This ups the listening quality by a thousand percent! Also, all my listening is only classical music - no Rock, Jazz, Pop, etc.; only classical.

I love this View. I've loaded half of my CD library on it. I don't download any music, it's all transferred from my own CD collection (over 1000). I use a bitrate of 160 kbps and with the user-set equalizer I get amazing music reproduction. Loading is very easy via drag-and-drop; a typical 65 minute CD takes about 30 seconds to transfer onto the View. Once transferred, all music is very easy to choose by scrolling through the various music albums or songs. My one BIG gripe about the View is the lack of scroll-through in the music listings. Since 32GB holds around 500 CD's, when you are at "Z" and want to get to "A" it takes about two minutes of scrolling back through the whole alphabet - the e-series had scroll-through, meaning that after "Z" comes "A" without changing direction. One other draw-back is the lack of a user-replaceable battery - in fact, ANY replaceable battery. When the battery dies, you can just throw the View away! Even Sandisk will not replace the battery. I've kind-of gotten around this by never shutting the View off: I bought an AC USB adaptor, and as soon as I stop using the View, I plug it into the adapter and thus it's always fully charged - or charging. I'm fairly convinced that this extends the useful battery life considerably - and you don't have to go through the rigamorole of starting up the View.

I carry the View around in my shirt pocket upside-down (the headphone jack is on the bottom) and thus just by putting a finger in the pocket I can turn the wheel to adjust the volume. I've (so far) had no scratches, nothing broken, nothing gone wrong, only lots of pleasure and lots of music. The battery life seems to last a long time, and no problems have been encountered (again, so far!). It's a great piece of electronics, and for my purposes, absolutely perfect, except for the lack of scroll-through. It's great.

This mp3 player is incredible. I have not seen anyone else come out with an solid state mp3 player greater than 16gb let alone one under $200 and with expandable microSD slot. Many overlook the fact that not having a hard drive and using flash memory increases the durability and battery life of the player. No moving parts means you are more likely to have a working mp3 player after you drop it (which is inevitable if you use it often). Also this is the only player i have seen with drag and drop feature for loading media. There is no proprietary software to learn how to use and let it screw up my music library. i simply drag the music folders (as they are organized on my hard drive) on to the player and that is it. That way I can take my music to work and drag it off my player and play it off my computer. Cant do that with an IPOD. So this capability also allows it to act like a 32gb portable harddrive. It plays videos as well, with a nice file converter that automatically takes in all sorts of video formats, converts them to one of the several supported formats, and matches the vido resolution to the player. This way i don't have a HD quality movie taking up memory when the screen only has 320x240 resolution (plenty for watching movies btw). Sansa also puts FM radios and voice recorders in their players. Apple still has yet to put a radio in their ipods. Perhaps they are greedy and don't want you to listen to the radio when they can charge you for music in the itunes store?

First off, let me say that I loved my Sansa Fuze. Check out my review of that device if you are interested. However, at 8GB internal with a maximum of 16GB microSDHC external, I was looking to expand. I wanted something that I could easily put my entire music collection on, along with videos from the Amazon Unbox (now Video On Demand) service. Naturally, after my good experience with the Sansa Fuze, I looked to SanDisk to see what they had to offer.

I was pleased to discover that the new Sansa View models now went up to 32GB of internal storage. Combine that with the 16GB microSDHC external, I could have an amazing 48GB of portable flash storage!!

This seemed like the best move to me, as I was alreay familiar with the Sansa interface. Plus, the $/GB ratio was the best of any flash player out there. I already owned the Altec Lansing iM413 docking station (another wonderful product) that would be compatible with the View.

I took the plunge and ordered one up. It arrived quickly and I opened it up. WOW!! The View was even nicer than the Fuze! Better build quality, and a much better screen. After loading up some music, I discovered it had even better sound quality than the already great sounding Fuze. Plus, I now had the ability to play videos! The view easily synced with Amazon Unbox to load up my Battlestar Galactica episodes. A nice feature of the View compared to the Fuze is the button icons light up (the Fuze's are painted on) and when you switch to video, the lights rotate so the controls make sense.

The final item I need to commend to you about this player is its ability to seamlessly integrate the contents of internal and external memory into one library. This is a feature SanDisk has nailed compared to ANY other player I have tried. The View does this with ease, and does it even faster than its cousin the Fuze. Another neat thing is that the View has a much bigger picture of your albums when using Album View than the Fuze.

In conclusion, the Sansa View has all of the features I loved about the Sansa Fuze, but with more memory, bettery build quality, a better screen and even better sound quality. Check one out today!

The Sansa View 32GB has a few annoying traits, but overall it is a nice player and the storage capacity is great. My biggest gripe is the MTP as the default transfer protocol and it's a bit of a pain to make it be a mass storage device. I really wish Sandisk had made this a configurable item in the firmware/settings and while I'm on the subject, I really would like to see Sandisk come out with a completely new firmware. The View uses the same firmware as all of the other Sandisk players I've tried in the last couple of years. Music playback quality is great and the only thing I feel this player lacks in playback is support for Ogg Vorbis. Video playback is very nice! When it plays a video it automatically plays it sideways (so it turns into a widescreen player) and ALL of the controls switch (so that they are right-side-up) automatically (even the lights change to match) which is a really cool feature! Battery life seems to be really good, but I haven't gotten anywhere close to the 35 hours Sandisk claims (although my MP3s are encoded at a higher quality than their test). The player has a professional quality to it that I feel is lacking in almost all other brands (especially Apple's). If Sandisk would stop using the same tired old firmware and create something new (with more user configurable settings!) this player _could_ be king.

This is a good player except for a couple things Sansa changed in the software that runs it. In the E280, I can go forward and backward through the lists, past Z to A again, which helped a great deal when I have hundreds of artists and albums and thousands of songs. That is, I could backward from A to Z, Y, X, W, etc., or I could go from W to X, Y, Z, A, B. With this player's software I can't go past the end (Z) to the beginning A and start over. If I'm at Z, I have to go backwards through the entire alphabet. This really sucks. I wish this player had the E380 software.

The delete function is moved from Music to More and is harder to get to. This sucks too. Once again, they should have kept the E380 software.

If you don't need 32 GB, I'd recommend the 8GB E280 instead.