Accessories

List of Bugs To Be Aware Of And good points as well
After intensive searching I chose this mp3 player for my Christmas gift. I eat mp3 players. Seriously. I have destroyed more than most people own. This is a good one, not a great one, and has some intrinsic flaws that the buyer should be warned about. I have kept the firmware updated and followed these problems in the forums. It's not just a few isolated devices, it appears to be most or all of them.

Big Con. The display and the buffer that holds in memory the last few songs played sticks fairly often. When it does you cannot go to the next song, change the volume or even turn it off normally. You can do the reset which is holding down the on/off button until it goes off. This often loses or corrupts recently added music. By fairly often I mean, it may play well for twenty minutes in a warm environment, five or ten if it is cold or damp, then it starts hanging. This apparently does not happen if you use a relatively small playlist and keep the changes to a minimum. I have hundreds of songs and want a machine that can flip through them in a truly random random. I don't want it to give me any problems if I forward through ten or twenty as soon as I hear the first few bars.

Big Pro. The button control is nice and easy to use, the buttons all conveniently located. It is a good size to carry around in your pocket.

Moderate Con. There is no quick way to search for a specific song. The lists by artist or album or title is alphabetic and starts at the top, it does not scroll back to A once you zip through the Z's so you have to roll the wheel back up if you overshoot.

Big Pro. Sound quality is good, video qualiy is good, works fine as drag and drop so you don't have to mess with any software. The screen is big and pretty, the best one I've seen.

Moderate Con. A large number, but not all of these players, were released with a gap in the casing near the on/off button. Basically the wiring and circuitry are bunched up in that area so the sides don't meet properly. You can actually see the wires in there. I'm sure if the unit gets wet, that will be the end of it, but it does not claim to be water resistant.

Big Pro. The player itself is light weight so when I drop it, dangle it from the headphone cords, or smack it against the stove handle while I cook dinner, it doesn't die as so many have before it.

Had I not been certain that Sansa would fix the hanging problem with an update to the firmware, I would have sent the player back. I waited instead and now am used to the bugginess. I just curse it good and use the reset. ^.^ Would I reccomend this product to someone else? No, I would suggest you wait until they release a debugged version of it, or buy the older version, the E200 series which is very, very similar, and has very few bugs. My husband has one and loves it. I borrow it when I get too frustrated with mine.

Consumer Beware!!!
I ordered and returned TWO of these. Both quit working after only a couple hours play. What a waste of time putting music on these and then they just quit! Will not try again.

Nice MP3 player
I have been using this MP3 player for about a month. The player is a nice size and solidly built. It syncs effortlessly with my MS Media Player. The 8MB size is more than adequate for giving my many hours of music to choose from. Among the features that I like: it's not an i-pod; there are many accessories to choose from; it is easy to navigate (there is even a power button!). The only thing that I do not like is navigating with the wheel, but I suspect that my silicon case it the root cause of this feature not working smoothly. I would recommend this player for someone who wants a solid, easy to use MP3 player at a great price. If you are 17, this one will not impress your friends.

I hate this player; wish I'd gotten an iPod
It's all about the controls, and the ones on this player stink compared to the iPod's click wheel. To scroll through a long list of songs takes forever--unlike the iPod, the speed of scrolling does not speed up if you speed your finger spinning up--takes forever to get halfway through the alphabet.

As others have mentioned, if you listen to podcasts or other voice recordsings, there is no way to come back to the point where you left off other than going to "scan through song" and rotating the thumb wheel endlessly, and slowly, to fast forward all the way to where you were before.

Oh and yes it's nice that it has an FM modulator built-in, but forget changing stations when you're on the treadmill--even once you "preset" stations--it takes 3 clicks and gentle scrolling to switch stations.

But the worst thing of all is the rotating thumb wheel's sensitivity--as you lift your thumb off of it to click the center, about half the time you inadvertently rotate it one more click so by the time you actually click the center button, you've rotated off of the option you meant to select. That and the totally un-intuitive buttons/controls--to go back tothe main menu you press the POWER button--huh? Yeah that makes sense.

Yes I too hate the whole DRM/proprietary Apple format but there's just no beating the design of an iPod.

Awesome
I highlt recommend this product for the price. I bought it for the long drives to and from work and I can use it wheni work out and have more memory than I really need but for the price it is great.