Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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82 of 83 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very good for the price, December 26, 2007
I bought the Sansa View on sale for $129.99, and I am very pleased with it. As a first-time buyer of an mp3 player, I was reluctant to pluck down a lot more money for an IPod, which at this point seem overpriced and overrated, given the other choices that are now out there.
The sound quality is quite good. I'd forgo the built-in EQ settings, which sound uninspired, and opt for the custom EQ that allows you to tailor the frequency response to your own tastes. I agree with some other criticisms that I've read online both in customer and professional reviews that lower bass response is a bit lacking. But I've found that a combination of tweaking the custom EQ settings, plus buying a better pair of earbuds that the ones provided, make up for this mild inadequacy. I bought V-Moda Bass Freq earbuds, which really help to round out the sound of the Sansa by providing plenty of lower bass response. My listening tastes range across classical, jazz, rock, blues, popular, and electronica, and the sound quality the Sansa provides is very good across all these genres.
The Sansa View is a bit large for a flash-memory based player, but I think this is due to the generous size of the display. The video quality is bright, sharp, and with good color, for videos, photos, and album covers. One small complaint is that the wallpaper options are quite plain, and there doesn't seem to be a way to add your own wallpaper options (or at least I haven't discovered it yet). Menus are simple and easy to navigate.
One feature I really wanted which no IPods have is an FM tuner. The digital tuner works quite nicely, with good sound and reception and up to 20 presets.
I really like the control wheel. It works smoothly and the rubber gives it a supple feel. And the look of the Sansa View simple and elegant, with a shiny piano black finish, with the body having a sturdy, solid build quality to it.
I've found the 8gb built-in memory to be more than adequate for my CD library. I've loaded around 60 CDs (a little over 1100 songs), and I still have about 1.5gb left. Bear in mind that many of my CDs are classical symphonies, jazz compilations, or electronica, which average 60-70 minutes each and take up space more quickly than your average CD. And the expansion slot for a microSD card, which I haven't tried yet, would allow me to add an additional 8gb of storage.
Overall, I'd rate the Sansa View as "best in class" in terms of offering very good overall quality and a generous selection of features for a modest price, compared to other comparable mp3 players.
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54 of 55 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Lot For The Money, March 5, 2008
Before a friend of mine showed me his Sandisk Sansa View, I was almost ready to purchase the Zune because I was impressed with the navigation, sound quality, and the heavy feel of quality the Zune seemed to possess. However, when I found out that Zune made you get Zune Marketplace and did not even work with Windows Media Player, I became disillusioned. However, I got to actually play with my friend's Sansa View, I was impressed with the feel of the quality, the capabilities of drag and drop from Windows Explorer (not available with Zune or iPod), sound quality, the same feel of switches and navigation, and the fact that it will hold other types of files as a huge memory stick.
If you decide to purchase a Sansa View, you need to do three things before playing with your View and installing mp3's. (1): Go to the Sansa site and dowload the media converter and most importantly the pdf advanced instruction manual (the manual that comes in the Sansa box is worthless). (2): Make sure that your mp3's are properly tagged per the ID3v2 standard because the ease of navigation within the View to your songs is heavily dependent on the proper tags. (3): If mp3 books from other sources, re-number chapters 1-9 as 01-09 to keep the flow proper or else it will list as 1,11,12...2, 20, 21... etc. and play in that order causing some confusion.
Pros:
Drag and drop from windows explorer
no ties to speciality software (iTunes or Zune Marketplace)
sound quality (with other headphones)
expanding storage with microSD cards.
audible.com compatible
flash memory
Cons:
limited selection of cases and expense of cases.
headphones (earbuds too big; sound crappy compared to other headphones I have from Sony, Samsung, Koss, Philips)
poor documentation in the box.
wished it had 7 band eq instead of 5 band eq to better tune your sound.
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76 of 80 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good, but not as great as i thought....., December 14, 2007
I bought mine (16gb one) the first week and heres the deal:
The player is beautiful, no question. The size is perfect imo and very light. The radio and mic features are very nice, and watching music videos or movies is much more enjoyable then i would have thought, thanks to the screen size, vivid colors, and detail. Everything is crisp and clear.
But the player does have many faults that I found upsetting, epecially for such a new product.
There does seem to be some difficulty with adding songs, you can drag-drop or use windows media player to "sync", but personally both options are faulty. Drag-drop twice did not work when i tried adding a single song to the rest of the files, and the folder wmp "sync"'s to is not the same folder where you drag-drop to, so maybe its an "either or" type of thing. wmp would be easy IF (and thats a big if) u already use it to manage your mp3 collection (i didnt though.)
For some reason mine would not retain a charge after charging from my pc. I took it back at one point and they suggested a wall charged since many have "problems" with usb charging. I'd never had a problem with my old ipod charging that way, but i bought a wall charger and it worked, charged to full and held the charge from that point on, so I dont know it thats this type of player or mine unit only, but its something to note.
Mine also did experience random "freezing." Its not too often, but if you keep pressing buttons it will last longer,so when I noticed it freeze, I would press nothing and wait for about 20 seconds the screen goes black (music will still be playing) and it basically ignored whatever you just pressed, but is ready for commands again. Very similar to a pc when it has to boot up a hd to access data, but this is flash based so it really shouldnt be doing that. (plus thats pretty long even for a spinning drive)
Also while its a solid design, the polished exterior is very prone to fingerprints and scatches. Smudges wipe away easy, but you'll be wiping it often. And the hard platic will get scratched by almost anything so I would ABSOLUTELY buy a protecive case if I bought one new.
Just for note.... the instructions are pure junk (if you care), there are about 21 preinstalled songs that are NOT on the disk that comes with the player, so dont format or delete if you want to keep those, ohhhh and the earbuds are less comfortable then the cheap ipod ones, so you should probibly drop a few bucks for new buds.
I know I made this sound like a bad player, which is sad cause I really love mine. But I had high expectations for it being better then the ipod and im just not sure it is. I had an ipod mini for 3 years and while it had almost none of the features this thing has, it was reliable, fast and easy to use. I never had any of these issues with that player so its hard to justify the extras when you're giving up some of the main functionality, like adding and playing mp3s without hangups. :/
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