MP3 players

(2 of 2 customers found this review helpful)

Comment:

I have just watched my 3rd Sansa die. I owned the original plastic and metal version of it, then bought this version twice. I love the little thing because it's so small that I can fit it inside an Altoids tin for storage with the ear buds. This makes it great for travel as I am constantly looking for smaller and smaller stuff for my travelling kit. It records great and reproduces those recordings well. It'll record a radio station that it tunes into. It will separate podcasts into their own menu. Easy to set up playlists and will do a playlist on the fly. Regular needle jack for headsets. It's easy to work with in Windows and you can look inside it with Windows and the files are labelled properly, rather than the gobbledeegook from an IPod. It really is a great little player as long as you aren't looking for video, which I am not. It's incredibly light construction is to it's benefit. If you drop it, it's like dropping a feather. There's not enough weight for it to damage itself. I would ALMOST give it a glowing report......<br />.....But in two out of the three players I've had (The original was run over by a car..but still played, though the screen was smashed) it catastrophically, and inexplicably fails. It won't recharge, or the screen will fail, or do weird things for a couple of days. Then it's over. I believe this runs down to it's charging. It can only charge through the USB port of a computer. It needs a VERY slow trickle. I have a Dynex trickle charger that takes a USB port, and the Sansa hates it. So I stayed away from that. I have a 12 volt trickle charger that fits in the car lighter so I can play through the stereo. I guess it hates that too. This one died in seven months.

How long have you owned it:

Bottom Line

Yes, I would recommend this to a friend.

(1 of 1 customers found this review helpful)

Comment:

I really like this player. I use it in the car (connected to the car audio system,) outdoors, and around the house. Because it takes micro SD cards it has monstrous memory capacity unless you want to carry all your music with you. It plays FLAC files, which is a sine qua non for me. I've never used the headphones that came with any mp3 player so the quality of the included headphones is unimportant to me. <br /><br />It's not tied to a proprietary system like the Apple products and is dirt cheap. You can replace the OS with the open source Rockbox OS easily and make it so capable that most users will never use all of the features. <br /><br />The only drawback for me is the size because the display is hard for me to read without glasses. If my vision were the way it was 20 years ago this wouldn't be a problem. If you're farsighted you'll need to keep this in mind. OTOH the small size means that it's very easy to carry. After about a year the belt clip broke. I can live with that. I was always ambivalent about the clip and find that I don't miss it.

How long have you owned it:

Bottom Line

Yes, I would recommend this to a friend.

(1 of 1 customers found this review helpful)

Comment:

Headphones are so-so - suggest you buy a good set somewhere. With a good set of headphones the sound quality is exceptional. Along with the normal formats it can also handle FLAC tracks if you want uncompressed sound. Good basic controls - easy to work on touch alone if jogging, etc. I get around 13 hours off the battery before having to recharge it (via USB port off a PC).

How long have you owned it:

Bottom Line

Yes, I would recommend this to a friend.