SanDisk Sansa e280 8 GB MP3 Player (Black)
by SanDisk
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List Price: Our Price: $50.00 You Save: $199.99 (80%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Network Media Player See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of SanDisk Sansa e280 8 GB MP3 Player (Black)
Customer Review: Meets Expectations
Summary: 5 Stars
We have bought four of the E200 series players (two of the 2GB, one 4GB and now the 8GB), and they are superb. The sonic quality is fantastic. You will want to upgrade the headphones, but that is true of anything you buy where the headphones are tossed in for free.
The E280 has the greatest capacity, at 8GB, which is big enough to store 2,000 songs. That is more than enough for me, and with the expansion slot you can add up to another 2GB. Micro SD cards are cheap, so that is definitely something I will consider when and if the time comes.
As to the player...it has a sturdy build, even though it is of a diminutive size. One thing you will want to do is purchase a case and screen protector, to prevent scratches to the front (especially the screen). Well worth the cost, and there are plenty of them out ther.
In addition to playing music (which is why I bought it), it has an FM radio, and can store photos and play videos.
Operating the Sansa is pretty much intuitive. My player is refurbished (which just means that Sansa opened the packaging, updated the firmware, checked everything out and stuck a sticker on the back...it is brand new, but comes in a plain box w/o the CD manual or lanyard). The menus are well laid out, and everything is controlled by the four buttons around a circle in the middle, which is used to toggle through the menu selections, and to also control the volume once the music or FM radio is playing.
There is not a lot more I can say about it that you can't learn about yourself by reading the other reviews. One thing I will mention is that the customer support could be better. I called Sandisk and immediately reached an operator who tried to walk me through the issue that I called about. The issue was that after I copied and pasted albums to the Sandisk after ripping the albums to the My Music folder, the album art wasn't brought over. There was a simple solution (first set the USB mode to MTC), but he made it seem complicated, since his solution was to edit every song of every album in Windows Media Player and add the album art. I suppose I could have figured this out on my own before calling, but I expected that the techies at Sandisk should know more about the product than I do.
My recommendation is to buy one and enjoy the music.
Customer Review: Great little player
Summary: 5 Stars
I finally decided to replace my ancient (I got it in 04) MP3 player. Back then I payed 70 dollars for a 256 meg MP3 player. A month ago, when I got this, I paid 120 for an 8 gig MP3 player. Moore, eat your heart out.
Positives: The capacity. 8 gigs is a lot of music. Using the expansion slot, you can add 2 more gigs with a microSD card for cheap (I got a 2gig for 12 bucks). This nets you 10 gigs of capacity for 130 dollars or so--with a flash player. I have 2,000 plus songs on mine. It isn't my whole collection, but it's a good enough amount of music to last a while. 2000 songs translates to probably over 100 hours of music.
The fact it's flash: it doesn't skip, and battery life is better than HDD based players usually manage. Very useful for the gym, or for use in my car on rough roads (using an adapter to play it over the radio). I haven't run down my battery yet, although my use hasn't been too heavy (I bring it to the gym sometimes, use it on my lunch break, or when I'm driving).
The features: Some people scoff at FM tuners in MP3 players, but I actually use it sometimes. Not all the time, but often enough to be glad of it. Same goes for the voice recorder.
The interface: wow, easy to use! Very easy to access different features, sync files, etc. I'd call it as easy to use as an iPod, maybe more so. The buttons are responsive, the scroll wheel works well, etc. Great ease of use (which is very important).
Good sound quality. I don't know that it's the best out there, but I'm listening to 192 kb MP3s on 30 dollar earbuds; I don't think that I'll get better sound without first shelling out major bucks for high end headphones--and for my uses that's really not worth it.
The bad:
If you use the expansion slot, it has to search the card every time you turn it on, which takes a few seconds. Annoying but not terribly so.
The included earbuds suck. Pick up some decent Shures or Koss or something; they sound much better.
I've been happily surprised by how good these are; I only picked them up because the WalMart I went to was out of the 8 gig Nanos, but the office store nearby had these on sale. Color me impressed. For the price, and features, and capacity, this is an amazing buy.
Customer Review: Nice Little guy
Summary: 5 Stars
I have been researching buying a new Mp3 player for months. I wanted to upgrade to more memory from my Iriver (512mb). I selected the Sansa 8mb over Zune and Ipod, because it has FM tuner, recorder, and memory card slot for extra memory. The other two players do not. Transfering music is very easy and the sound is great. The menu buttons are easy to navigate. However, There are a couple of things I didn't like. (see below)
1. I purchased the player from [...] and it died after two days. The menu button got stuck and wouldn't stop rotating the menus. It would not even shut off. So, I let it run all night until the battery died.
2. When I am in the FM mode listening to the radio there is no stop button to stop the radio and return to the main menu. I had to get to the main menu an select music then turn off the player.
3. I wish Sand Disk would have included either the plastic or leather case, especially for the price paid for this item. The case included is cheap and non functional.
4. The earbuds included fall out of my ears. Fortunately, I have a pair of sony earbuds that work better which I had purchased to replaced the earbuds that came with my Iriver player.
5. The actual menu buttons could be little more prominate. Sometimes when I press the buttons I have to press them again because the buttons are so faint. I guess I just don't press hard enough.
6. The system works well with WMP, however, I use Music Match and had no problems downloading songs. The downside is I can't transfer playlist with MM. I can only transfer playlist using WMP. I have to export the playlist into WMP and it doesn't get all the information correct.
7. As note make sure your player is in MSC mode when you have card in the slot. That way you will see the card as a separate drive in Windows. I load songs on it and swap the card back and forth with my cell phone.
I really think this is a very nice player and If your buy it you will enjoy it. The color screen is really nice. I read some where that this player works well with Yahoo Music Player.
Customer Review: Good Deal For The Money
Summary: 5 Stars
I was in the market for a good MP3 player at a decent price with a larger than average capacity. I decided upon the Sansa e280, and purchased a refurbished player. I'm very satisfied about my purchase and would recommend this product to someone wanting a great MP3 player who doesn't want to shell out too much money. One of the main selling points was that this is a flash based player, so there is no skipping or worries about mini-drive crashes. The refurbished model that I received looked brand new, save for the silvery printing on the back labeling it as a refurb. The controls are fairly intuitive, and took less than a minute to get used to. There are several equalizer settings to adjust the sound levels for different types of music which really help to fine tune the experience. The sound quality is pretty good, and the included earbuds are better than average. The LCD screen is bright and crisp, and may be a little too bright in full dark situations--enough to find your keys in an unlit room at night. The scroll ring is a little small for my hands, but I assume that may just be because of how I hold it. The built in FM tuner is a nice feature, but isn't the powerhouse of reception I would want it to be. The screen is large enough to see pictures well, but not large enough to really scrutinize images. The only problem I have had is with organizing my files. I prefer to use the drag and drop method instead of synchronizing with Windows Media Player. The problem with this is if you don't have your ID3 tags in order a lot of music may end up in folders named Unknown or in several different folders depending on spelling errors. A real hassle when you've moved 3gigs and realize it after you're away from the computer. File transfer is speedy and easy to setup if using drag and drop. The file transfer cable is also the recharge cable, and it only connects to USB so you have to have a computer on to recharge the unit. Their proprietary software is required to transfer image or video files, I haven't tried using it so I can't say how difficult it is. Overall, a great player and definately worth the money.Customer Review: Great Buy!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
This product is everything it is advertised as.
The diplay is crystal clear and bright. I had to turn the display DOWN because it was so bright. Even in the sunlight I only have it set to 2. And we're talking desert sun here!
Music loading is a breeze. I have Windows Media Player 11 and have had no problems syncing with the e280. Switching music is just a matter of going in and erasing and then dropping more mp3's in. I had 1GB of music on it within 10 min of plugging it in!
Not sure about capacity. The manual says you can put about 2000 WMA or 1000 MP3's on the e280 (at avg 4 min song length). Everything of mine is in mp3 so I can't say for certain whether it's true or not. And then I have whole CDs in mine, so that really messes up the song count. Mine is telling me that I have 581 songs with a little over 1GB remaining. Alot of that would be due to the fact that I have several 40-60 min symphonies in there! LOL
Music playback is pretty good. Finding what you want to listen to is a snap if you have your ID3 tags set up right. If not (like me) it can be a pain. I have since corrected that though!!! Sound is good. The volume is plenty loud. I can drown out the music in the gym with it, standing next to the speaker and not even have it turned up all the way. The best setting is Custom, I think. The other settings can sound a little canned at times. Especially with the dynamics of classical. But with the Custom you can set what sounds best to YOU.
The FM radio is a nice touch. Haven't really used it though.
The Voice Recorder is the best feature yet. It picks up sounds across the room easily. And it has a button on the side that will override anything you are playing or doing. Takes a second to start recording, but it starts automatically.
Haven't tried it with any online music sources. I already have 12 GB of music on my PC, so I haven't needed to.
It does play video too, but I haven't tried that yet.
Other than that, it's a great buy. You won't be disappointed.