Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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689 of 704 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great Player for the Price and Category!, December 3, 2004
I recently bought this player. Both my wife and I have been in the market for new MP3 players and just haven't been interested in a hard drive based player, iPod or not. We don't need to carry that much music around and I like the non-moving flash thing a lot better. We mainly want to use a player for workouts and traveling. So far, I think it's an excellent player with some minor exceptions.
The player comes with a clear plastic snug carrying case that not only provides screen protection but also can be worn on a thin belt or on the provided stretchy armband. It also comes with the USB cable and headphones that are too short for my liking, but then maybe you don't want long cords when it's attached to your arm. It takes one AAA battery and I haven't done any form testing or anything, but my original battery has lasted several days now with several hours playtime each day. The battery meter is flipping between one bar and no bar so it is getting low. There is a quick start guide, but the manual is a 29 page PDF on the CD. The CD also has Musicmatch and 98SE drivers.
This player has been compared to the iRiver series of MP3 players, and I would have to agree they are very similar except that the iRiver takes a AA and is triangular while the SanDisk player takes the AAA and reminds me more of a thick cigarette lighter both in shape and size. I was also told the iRiver is bit pricier. I like the finish and look of the player, which shows through the case. The red and silver is very sharp and the whole look of the player is very clean. It has the USB port, which has a rubber door on one side of the player and the headset port, microphone and neck cord hole on the opposite side.
The actual operation of the player is also very good although it has a lot of features and functions that are only accessed by the joystick and three side buttons. With so many features, it takes a little bit getting used to navigating around the player and of course the manual does not go into great detail about the features, although it does have an exploded menu diagram which is nice. This is probably why I only gave it four stars. I might have actually done 4.5 stars if I could have, because once you have the chance to play around with things and read the manual it isn't a big deal.
There are three modes: player, FM radio and voice recorder. I am most impressed with the radio as this was a minor reason why I bought the player. The radio actually does a decent job of picking up the stations here in the Phoenix area and the reception and sound quality is fairly good. Considering how small the player is, I was surprised I am getting as good a sound as I am. The player will automatically scan available stations and add them to the presets and you can tune manually and add presets manually as well. You can also choose if you want mono or stereo mode, although I don't know why anyone would want mono, unless it saves on batteries. I don't see myself using the radio too often, but it's nice to know it's there if I needed it. I haven't really played around with the voice recorder either, but it records at 32kbs and 8Khz so not the greatest of quality. Again, voice recording is not the reason I purchased this for so not a big deal.
So, as far as the Audio Player mode, it is a great! A few minor quibbles, but for the most part, I think both my wife and I will be very happy with this player. I have uploaded mainly 192Kbs music files and 64kbs spoken word files and they all sound excellent. As a non-audiophile, the sound and volume are quite good for me. Maybe even better with a quality pair of headphones. I can't even get past 32 (of 40) on the volume scale before my ears are hurting so I know the volume should be just fine while working out at the gym. The display is blue backlit and somehow they manage to put a lot of info on the LCD without cluttering everything up. And supposedly,It does read the ID3 tags and displays them. I am not going into all of the features here, but it is packed with them: sleep, hold, repeat, shuffle, playback speed, A->B play, equalizer. One feature I will go into detail about is Resume. I am a big fan of the audio book and my previous MP3 player did not have resume so when I had a long file playing and I had to stop the player, it would not pick up where I stopped it but at the beginning of the file. Not this baby. It picks up right where it left off when you power it down. Whoo-hooo!! No more fast-forwarding to find my spot on an audio book!
The joystick on the player is a multi-function device that navigates the file browser and the menu system. This is the only part of the player I am not thrilled with. The file browser can be cumbersome to navigate with joystick and sometimes I end up hitting select or the wrong direction and end up a different place than I thought. The other thing that seems counter-intuitive to me is that rather than selecting a directory or file by pushing select, you need to select the file or directory by pushing right (or left, the display is rotatable). I keep forgetting this, and I end up back at the currently playing song. But other than that, I really can't complain about it. I can easily see folders and files, and files that are too long for the display scroll to the left to see the entire file name. These minor things are the other reason I did not give the player a full five stars. Just a matter of getting used to it and someone else might not even agree that it's a problem.
The joystick also is the way to get into the main menu of settings and functions: Audio, Display and System. From here you can customize just about anything on the player including: display orientation (useful for righties or lefties), backlight time, ID3 tag scroll, display info, auto power off, sleep timer, FM region, FM scan sensitivity, resume control and a ton more. You can see the memory usage, firmware and format the player as well. Full featured and well designed. The other three button, A>B, Rec, and Play/Stop/Power also do multiple functions depending upon if the player is playing and the mode it is in.
Windows 2K and XP both recognized the device as a USB drive no problem and I used both Media Player and drag/drop to add music to the player. Although I did notice today that if you build folders or add files via drag/drop, then Media player will not do anything with those particular files and you will have to change them via the directory listing in Windows. Haven't bothered with the included Musicmatch as my media is already set up in Media Player. According to the instructions it will play MP3, WMA and WMA DRM files. Voice recording is in ADPCM format.
Since this is to be my wife's player, the real test was if she was going to like it and at first look, her comment was ""Ooooh, look how cute!!" And she liked the weight of it as well. So, now I just have to instruct her on how to use it. I ordered the 512MB model for myself, which was probably a good move since both of us will have the same player and I can answer any questions she has since I will have the same way to do things. I highly recommend these players for anyone looking for a flash based player with all the basics of today's digital audio player and a few bonuses as well and a great price.
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224 of 231 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Out of Box is Perfect, December 18, 2004
Well, I got this device and looked at it for 5 seconds. Ok, there's the USB connector. Bang, it's on the computer. Since I was looking forward to this player showing up, I went ahead and created a file of music for it. So about a minute or two later I had 115 songs on the player, even before I got around to putting the battery in it.
I took out a pair of cheap Sennheiser headphones, the full sized kind. The sound quality is just fine with no adjustment. Unfortunately, now I ran into the first problem. The unit is so light, and the Sennheiser headphone cord is quite thick, so the darned thing wouldn't just drop to the bottom of my pocket. Geeminy, the stuff you have to put up with to use these little gadgets.
I suppose it would be a good idea to use rechargeable batteries. But the good news is that you can get 2 of them, the NiMH kind, for 10 bucks. And if the first one goes bad, you should have a few spares for the 10 dollar outlay. Who needs a player with a battery only the factory can replace?
Well, now my only regret is not getting the 1 gigabyte unit. That would be 500 songs (mostly wma at 64 and 96), and might not be too good in terms of naviagation. Like I say, you can transfer the full capacity in a couple of minutes with USB2.
Why go with a huge capacity hard drive player? Do you really need a fancy program to track every song and synch up with a player? Look, if you want simple, this is your baby. Just transfer the songs as files, to the player. That's it. WMA or MP3.
Way to go, Sandisk. Just last a year, OK?
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26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Price, Great Player!, November 16, 2005
We bought this player for my husband to use while jogging and while he is working in the yard. We didn't want to spen a fortune on constantly upgrading technology and at 256mb we figured he would have plenty of music for the reasons we bought the player. We loaded 4.5 CDs onto the player, 2 of which had 14 songs and some of those songs were as long as 6-8 minutes. It is awesome. The volume is very loud, loud enough to be heard over an old riding lawn-mower that is VERY noisy. The arm band is handy, it't useful for holding the player while doing dishes and chopping wood, jogging or working in the yard. It is very easy to organise the music on your computer by copying/pasting or dragging/dropping. I never even bothered with the software, I found Windows Media Player and my own music folder much easier to use. It took less than a minute to put an entire CD onto the player and I simply disconnected the USB cable and we were ready to go. It is so simple to add and remove music that I could care less about the smaller memory. In addition to the MP3 part there is the FM radio. This is great. Since the Sandisk has a small memory, you can go to the radio if you are sick of your music selection and the reception is great. We also used it to burn my son's books on CD when we went on road trips, the grocery store and the doctor. It is so tiny, much better than a CD player or radio walkman. The controls take a bit of getting used to but the light makes it easy to see what you are doing. Many of the players in this range did not have a light which I think is an absolute must. This player is not an iPod which I think is in its favor. At the price we paid, I would not freak out if it got destroyed the way I would over an iPod. I could easily afford to replace it and I also can be assured that I won't spend a fortune and then have an equally expensive new and better model come out mere months later. This is a small and simple player for a great value. I highly reccomend this purchase!
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