| Aquarian |
For a few months now I've been looking for a portable media player in the 6-10gb range with a decent price/value. I did quite a bit of research on current and upcoming models including Creative's Zen, the MS Zune, samsung's players, and sandisk's new e200 series. I know I've mentioned this before but I used to work for a mac-specialized vendor, and thus I've received an extensive training on ipods. For that reason, I've grown to despise both the product and the company, and it was clear that I would avoid them like the plague. So last week I stumbled on a sale I couldn't pass and picked up Sandisk's Sansa e270 (the 6gb version of the e200 series). -picture-
The e200 series is pretty much a direct competition to apple's 2nd gen ipod nano. The nano comes in 2gb, 4gb and 8gb. In a similar fashion, the Sansa comes in 2gb, 4gb, 6gb, and 8gb (which was released later on). In addition to playing mp3s and viewing pictures (which both models can do), the Sansa can also play videos, has a built in FM tuner (with recording option) and a microphone. I paid 196$c for my 6gb model. For a 4gb ipod, I would have paid 229$c, and 299$ for an 8gb. On top of that, the sansa has a bunch of built-in features that would cost you extra to add on an ipod.
Sansa e270: 196$
Ipod equivalent: 299$ + 40$(radio tuner) + 40$(microphone) = up to 379$
On top of that, I haven't calculated apple's crazy diagnostic fees along with the costs of shipping your ipod when the battery dies (and trust me, it will die).
Construction
From the moment you first put it in your hand, you get a good impression of the player's solid build. The backplate is made of metal. The top side is covered with a shiny (and unfortunately very scratchable) surface, but also feels quite solid (much more so than the ipod nano). The sansa is also about twice as thick as the nano, and far heavier (probably due to the materials used in it's construction). It's biggest downside is that, despite the quality of the frame, the scroll wheel itself feels somewhat cheaper and less durable.
Features
The e200 comes standard with video playback, mp3 support, FM tuner, FM recorder, voice recorder and picture viewing. The sound quality of the mp3 and movie playback is great (when compared to the ipod, there is no considerable difference), but unfortunately, you won't get the full effect of it with the cheap earbuds that ship with it. It's pretty much a must to get yourself a decent set of earphones. Videos play with no trouble, but both the screen's small size and the low capacity of the player make it a somewhat worthless feature - a good bonus, but certainly not a selling point. The FM tuner works as you'd expect it to. The headphone wires work as an antenna, so the signal isn't always as stable as you'd like it to be. The recording feature works rather well, but it could encode at a higher bitrate than 56kbps.
The Sansa has two very important advantages over other media players. The first one being that the battery can easily be changed. All you need is a screw driver to remove the backplate, and then just click it in. This takes away the hassle of having to ship to the vendor and pay some ridiculous diagnostic fees (like apple would have you do). Extra batteries can be bought for about 20$. This almost makes it worth the extra cost to have two batteries charged for long trips where you won't have access to a USB port for recharging. The battery itself is very durable and can last up to 20 hours while just playing back audio and about 15 hours while browsing through menus and toying around with settings (it's not just what the box says, I tested it myself ;) ). That's a few hours more than the ipod nano's battery (probably due to the Sansa being a flash player while the ipod uses a mini hard drive). The other neat feature is that the player's memory is expandable up to 2gb extra through a microSD slot on the side, bringing it's maximum storage capacity to 10gb (on the e280 model), the highest for any flash-based player on the market.
Interface
The Sansa takes about 5 seconds to boot up. It comes with a basic operating system that's very similar to that of the ipod. You use a scroll wheel to browse through different sorts of media and sort them by artist, genre, or title. Like the ipod, it also has integrated playlist functions and a shuffle mode. You can change the volume by turning the wheel (dedicated volume buttons would have been much nicer). Controlling the wheel can be very tricky at first. It takes a few minutes of playing around to really get the hang of it.
Transfering files is a piece of cake. Simply plug it into the USB port. The player will list as a removable hard drive. All you have to do is click and drag your mp3 files in the music directory. As for photos and video, the player comes with an installation CD that carries a basic conversion tool that resizes media to the proper resolution and format. This is a big plus for all the itune haters out there (me being one of them ;) ).
Overall
After all is said and done, I truly believe that this is by far the best mp3 player currently on the market. It's solid, it's stable, it's cheap, it's expandable... Aside from the tricky interface, there's nothing that the ipod can do that this thing can't do better. If you're one of the millions of people getting frustrated with ipods and looking for an alternative, this is it. |
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