Customer Reviews

SanDisk Sansa m230 512 MB MP3 Player (Blue)

5 star:		(346)
4 star:		(190)
3 star:		(33)
2 star:		(25)
1 star:		(50)

 

 

Alright, so mp3 players, yeah there's so many to choose from, it gets really annoyin, especially when all of your trendy friends are telling you to get an ipod. Don't get me wrong, ipods are great, i have one in fact, and i love it. But i rollerblade (not recreational, like the kind where you go to skateparks and grind handrails and various other things). So the the ipod's size makes it more prone to be broken, which is why I love this thing. I'm going to skip all the candy coating and get straight to the tootsie roll filling:

pros:
-Most other mp3 players are a little bit thinner, but the sansa has a flat control panel and the back is round to fit in your hand, i know, i know, you're going to put it in your pocket, well just put the interface on the inside of the pocket and none of the buttons have a chance of breaking, or the screen.

-The sansa has an extremely long battery life for one little AAA, around 20 hours, which is awesome since i hate buying batteries, but that's not a problem because i have rechargable AAA, but it's gets extremely aggrivating having to recharge batteries everytime you go out.

- The buttons are perfect, they're big, they're bold, what more do you want, and i noticed most mp3 players put these tiny little pin size buttons on their players, what's the point of that.

-The menu is really straightforward and simple. You just press the menu button on top of the player, and then use the 4 buttons (play/pause, previous track, next track, and stop) as the directional buttons on the menu.

-I used to have the older version of the sandisk mp3 players (256mb) and it was never loud enough, like i would be on the bus or in a busy area and not even be able to hear my music! Thankfully they enabled it to become louder and have a better sound quality.

-It's very inexpensive, i payed 40$ for mine from a seller on amazon. And that's about how much it goes for retail everywhere else.

Cons:

-The only problem i have is that the earbuds that they come with aren't the best in the world, but i still use them, they're the only earbuds i have ever found that have fit my ears without a 2 billion dollar price tag. Or i would get new ones.

-The fm tuner that comes with this is junk, i get a good signal every once in a while, but it really shouldn't be used as a marketing gimmick, considering most flash mp3 players have one now.

Ok, well thanks for reading my review of the sandisk sansa 512mb. I forgot to mention that it has a decent voice recorder for notes and such, but i always have mine filled to the the rim with music, so i've never really had the oppurtunity to really try it out.

Sandisk's MP3 players have really come into their own. Not only are they packed with features, but the price is reasonable. Sandisk has come a long way from their original Digital Audio Player.

This model has tons of things going for it.
- great sound, nothing not to like there
- light-weight
- FM tuner
- voice recording
- ergonomic design
- great navigation and sorting features
- Microsoft PlaysForSure compatible (for those who are into that)
- USB 2.0 connectivity
- replaceable battery!!!

The cons are minor in my opinion
- limited shuffle features
- built-in microphone could have been improved
- mediocre backlight
- slower transfer speed on older computers

For those needing more space, the Sansa M240 and M250 offer more space in the same form factor. This unit is not ideal for those who primarily want to use it for recording. Sony's various models are all superior in that regard.

One thing I have to wonder is why Sandisk didn't include an SD slot in this bad boy. I've already seen a few similar players with them.

I took a test drive and I liked it so much, I bought it as a holiday gift for a friend. I would definitely recommend it. I wanted to keep it myself, but I'm gonna get my own instead. :)

Enjoy!

The Sandisk Sansa is a small flash-based mp3 player that runs for many hours on a single AAA battery available wherever. It is so easy to use I did not and have not even looked at the instruction manual. The sound quality is really good and the price can't be beat.
As others have noted, the array of mp3 devices is really bewildering. Basically, there is iPod and everything else. Ultimately, this product seems to be the best of the "everything else" category - and there are some significant reasons why I think people are better off with this than with iPods. Firstly, and most importantly for me, the Sandisk player functions as a drag and drop drive into which you can just put your music files and they play right away. There is no proprietary interface such as iTunes required. This is a huge advantage for anyone who does not use or like iTunes, as I do not. Loading and unloading files can be done easily and seamlessly through the regular windows desktop interface. This results in a device that is considerably more useful and robust than iPods which require the use of the stupid and childlike, yet strangely frusterating, iTunes software - one of the biggest problems of which is that you can only use one computer at a time to sync to your music library. This is really not cool. If, however, you want to use a designated piece of software to sync to the Sandisk, you can use musicmatch or a number of others and it works without any of the hassle of iTunes. In fact, with one click, you can sync whatever is playing on your Musicmatch playlist to the player... something that I never really figured out how to do with iTunes. Furthermore, you can easily use the flash memory to hold any other kind of file just like a pen drive.
In the end, I can only attribute the success of iPods to their marketing blitz and to their kind of catchy designs. But these are not really good reasons to buy a music player. I had an iPod for a while before I spilled coffee all over it and I don't miss it one bit. I only wish I had gotten one of these sooner and had given away my iPod to someone who likes them instead of the unfortunate end that it met. I think if you buy one of these you won't regret it. It's not quite as tiny as the iPod shuffle and it does require AAA batteries but it is a much more useful piece of equipment.

I love the quality of the Sansa M230. My only regret is that I didn't spend the extra on the next model up. Although the advertisement and manual say 120-240 songs, realistically I've only got about 100-110 on it and it's full. It's possible I'm ripping at too high a quality...128-160 kbs. In all fairness though, I knew going into it that I only needed 11 or 12 CDs on the player at a time. After a week or two I get tired of them and re-sync using Windows Media Player v10. The sync process was the hardest part to figure out but once I got that down it's great. You can also drag and drop to and from the player through Windows Explorer. Windows sees the player as just another drive but you cannot create playlists with this method. As far as quality, sound and features go it's simple and fantastic.

Update May 1, 2006 - Ripping from CDs at 96kbs is very adequate. The quality is still very good and you can fit significantly more music on this device....that is 150-200 tunes.

I have had this product since it was introduced. It is a sturdy, strong device.

OK, first of all I would like to ask, Why does everyone need an 80 GB Ipod? This Mp3 Player holds at least 99 songs, or at least mine does. An 80 GB Ipod might have the photo features, but who cares? The Mp3 player is for songs. This Mp3 player has long battery life for using 1 AAA battery.

This Mp3 player is a modern marvel. It's small, it works, it has all an Mp3 player needs, and it's sturdy.

This Mp3 player is approx. 2 inches long, 1.5 cm tall, and 1.5 cm wide. Its small enough to fit in you pocket without creating a prominent(odd looking) bulge. It looks good on your arm if your wearing it, and has good default earplugs.

I also see that some people put the tag "defective" on this player. I ask those people, "What are you talking about?" This Sansa is all you really need. Of course the microphone isn't all that great, but that's not what you got the Mp3 player for anyway. This Mp3 player plays songs, shuffles them, and can skip around through them. What more do you want? A lot of people have the most expensive Mp3 player out there, and have a whole lot of extra gadgets. Why do you need a calender on your Mp3 player?

This Mp3 player has a flash memory, which means it has no moving parts, so it's durable, and you can have it bouncing around your pocket all day. This is an ideal Mp3 player for kids, and clumsy adults. I have dropped my Sansa on the floor at least 300 times, and even when I was playing songs, the Sansa didn't skip a beat. It still works after 2 or 3 years of playing and dropping.

So..., let me wrap it up:

Pros/Pluses:
* Long lasting battery
* A type of battery where you don't need a charger
* Durable
* OK looking.
* Enough memory to last for 4 hours of songs.
* An easy to understand control system.

Neither:

The power doesn't go on directly, you have to hold in the menu button, but this is obvious, otherwise it would turn on or off without your will in your pocket, and your batteries will go empty.

Cons/ Negatives:
- The installation software is not needed, yet they send it with it still.

To close, The Sandisk Sansa M230 is an excellent player, with limited features, but with a low price tag, and a great player, I would recommend it to family and friends.

PS: Currently 3 of my friends, and my father has this player.

I just recently purchased this Sandisk Sansa m230, and I must say I am impressed. For the price, this little model is easy to use, and the MP3 and WMA files are all working with it. So far, the Playforsure is true to its name. Best part, this model has become more affordable, most 512mb players near 80-100 dollars, except some cheaper models that can have problems with WMA files and some MP3s. My brother has a little GPX 128 player, and it has done fair as well. Easy to load, it uses Windows media player to transfer files via a USB connection. The menus are easy to learn and navagate thru as well. I also enjoyed playing with the equalizer, which has a custom setting, as well as some preset settings. The sound is actually pretty good as well. I haven't had it long enough to find out battery life yet. But it does store quite enough music, 120+ songs depending on size or type. Now that I have this little system, I may be daring enough someday to purchase a jukebox size system and load it. Either way, this is easy to use, fraction of the cost of some of the other brands, and plays most formats of music files. To boot, it comes with a little plastic sleave and belt attachment, or a band to attach to the arm. Also included are the earbuds and cord, and a disc with window media player and other software offers. A+ in my book.
Note Update: This player does not play the MP4 file, which is what itunes uses, so itunes users sorry. My other MP3s are compatable so far still. And battery life seems to be now toward at 10+ hours now.
Note again:Had about 2 months now, no problems, battery life starting with a fresh duracell is about 12 hours give or take.

I actually like the feel and the value of this player quite a bit, but there are a few key challenges.

The controls are laid out in an ergonomic fashion, and I've found the display fairly easy to read. I suggest you change the default backlight time to stay on longer, say 45 seconds, lest it frustrate you in the dark by shutting off prematurely.

This brings up one of the three negatives I've found: The player appears to go into a power-saving mode after a certain amount of battery life is exhausted. This means the backlight will not come on no matter what you do, until the battery recovers (after being turned off for a while) or is replaced. Since I always carry a spare battery with me, I'd prefer the player operate 100% until it runs out of juice. I often use it at night, and this frustrates me a little.

One of the positive aspects, the easy-access battery cover, has turned into a slight negative. It's just a little loose, and is prone to pop off if you drop the player. I could see having to put a little piece of tape on it at some point in the future to hold it together.

The last issue I had is something a number of people have complained about, and I believe I have found the solution...

The seemingly random play order experienced by myself and others seems to have something to do with the ID3 tags on the MP3 files themselves. Rather than using your directory structure as a way of sorting the music, the Sansa sorts by artist and album all by itself, based on info from the ID3 tags. The songs that weren't sorting in proper album order had one of two things in common: They were either a v2.2 ID3 tag, and/or had a total track number (as in 3 of 12) as part of the tag.

The way I solved this in iTunes (I use MP3 in iTunes, not AAC) was to highlight any tracks with an "of xx" track number, right-click to "Get Info," and eliminate the number (where xx is the total number of tracks on the album). NOTE: Leave the track number (first number) alone! Then I highlighted ALL the tracks in the album, right-clicked to "Convert ID3 Tags," and changed them all to v2.3.

This was a little cumbersome at first, but isn't that difficult, and it seems to make the files something that the Sansa can understand and will sort properly.

If Sandisk would address this, both on their website support FAQ, and through a firmware upgrade that would fix the problem, I'd give this product five stars for excellent value!

They have now released the Audible Driver (in response to the review complaing about no Audible Support) and at any rate, the Sandisk Digital Audio Player driver worked once you put the device into MSC mode.

Overall, it's a great little device, especially for the price. It does everything you want. It doesn't have a Huge storage, but I have 92 subscription songs plus a 6 hour audio book on mine. It's sufficient for the gym and casual use.

no, it's not an ipod, but it definitely does the job. In fact it has several features going for it over any iPod. 1) FM tuner 2) Recording 3) Subscription Audio files 4)Replaceable Battery(!!!!). I have a 40GB 3G ipod, and the hard drive is failing, the battery stinks, yada yada. The Sansa is a simple device, which works consistently. An excellent little device overall.

I got this player after I already had a 512MB Ipod Shuffle, because at times I missed being able to see the ID3 song information on a display screen. Also the price was unpassable the day after Thanksgiving as well.

So here it is about a month later, So I can pass on not just the first thoughts, but what I learned thru much experience so far as well. Hopefully the information will help you make an educated decision.

The sound is very good, no background hiss at all, great clarity. You WILL need a different set of earbuds though, the ones it comes with are even worse than the IPOD stock units. I suggest the very inexpensive Sony 828's.

Using the built in equalizer with the "Rock" setting will make the stock earbuds sound OK, but just barely.

The backlight is dim, but a nice blue color. Combined with the small font however, makes the display not useable in the dark. The scrolling of the text is the smoothest I have ever seen on any display. You will see all of the song information.

The Sansa is chunky, but very comfortable to hold. The almost 1" thickness may make it uncomfortable in tighter pockets.

The AAA battery life is very good. I get 20 hours. Interestingly enough your friends probably will not use up any of this battery life. Without reading the instructions, it is hard to figure out how to turn the unit on in the first place! (You hold down the small MENU button on the side for 3 seconds)

The cpu to mp3 upload speed is SLOW. Takes 10-15 minutes over a USB2 connection on a 3 GHZ machine. Same size IPOD takes me 5 minutes.

The FM tuner reception is excellent, good separation, frequency response and sensitivity. Hardly ever fades out. Tuning and presets are good as well.

The voice recorder has only one quality level, I think 32k sample rate, sounds muffled like AM radio quality. Microphone is pretty sensitive. Will fit several days worth of lectures for later study and review.

The shuffle function is not so good. It replays songs you already heard, before you hear them all. It is truly random, but I much prefer the Shuffle method where you hear them all, before you hear repeats. ALSO if you use the FM radio and go back to MP3's, the play list starts at the beginning again, and in the same order!

I still use the Shuffle, because it is sleeker, smaller, and "shuffles" much better. But if you can get the Sansa at a really good price, the sound is excellent, the FM is great, the display good in bright light, and the recorder is just, well, OK. Just don't forget a better set of headphones and enjoy.

I will begin with the pros; excellent value, compact design, great sound fidelity, intuitive menus, and ability to play music by album, artist, or a single song.

Now the cons; battery life - 1 AAA Duracell Alkaline battery seems to last for about 12 hours (for me). I have a job where I destroy electronics, then sit at a computer and write reports about it. I listen to my mp3 while doing that for eight hours straight, so I change my battery about every day and a half. There is also this strange 'glitch' where the player locks up (literally). I have to pull the battery to get it out of this state. This is the main reason why I give this player a "4" instead of a "5". Finally, and I realize this is probably nothing to most of you, but why on earth did they decide on the color white for the foam earphone covers? I have had this mp3 player about 4 weeks and the white foam is more gray than white any more.

Why did I buy this mp3 palyer? I bought this mp3 player because I was not sure if I wanted an mp3 player or not. 'Would I really use it', 'Do I really listen to a lot of music', and 'Do I have a large enough music library to justify the cost' are some of the questions that ran through my mind. Generally, I'm the kind of person that buys the things I buy because I either need it, or I will get some amount of pleasure out of owning it. I did not want to spend a lot of money on an mp3 player if I was not going to use it, but I needed to see what the 'mp3 culture' fuss was all about too.

Well, as you just read, I use it for eight hours straight. I do listen to more music than I thought, and it turns out that I had a larger music library than I thought. I bought this model because of its price, so when I got it home and filled it up with my music choices, I found that I could only get 123 songs loaded on it. That gets almost every Primus album, The Wall, and most of Wish You Were Here on it. I still have plenty of Floyd albums, and other Claypool albums, and other artists I want to listen to througout the day, so I will be purchasing another mp3 player with more capacity. I will stick with the SanDisk on the next purchase.