SanDisk Sansa e280R Best Buy Digital Music Store MP3 Player Review
Features of the Sansa e280R MP3 PlayerWhat's in the Box Inside the package with the Sansa e280R you get the following items:
Storage Capacity & Other Features The Sansa e280R is one of the highest capacity flash based MP3 players on the market. Sure you can get higher storage capacity on other MP3 players like the iPod, but they are based on small hard disk drives rather than flash memory, with the exception of the new Nano that is flash based. SanDisk covered the Sansa in a scratch resistant metal for the rear of the case and in a black plastic on the front that is a glossy black color.
The rear cover of the Sansa is removable to allow for user replacement of the rechargeable battery. The battery life is rated at 20 hours by SanDisk, and was about dead on accurate in my testing. Charging of the battery is accomplished directly from your PCs USB port via the charge and sync cable. To allow for better video playback and improved display of images, the LCD display is a 1.8" TFT color screen that has great color reproduction.
Another really cool feature SanDisk incorporated is an microSD card slot that supports read or write from external sources to the e280R. So you could use the card to move data and files from a smart phone or other microSD equipped gadget. The microSD card will not show up under "My Computer" in MTP mode that is required to use the Sansa with monthly music services such as Rhapsody. To allow the SD card it's own drive letter in My Computer, you have to set the system to MSC mode for use with applications like Windows Media Player.
The built-in EQ has some great presets that you can use to tailor the sound of your music to your tastes. SanDisk also included a built-in FM tuner with the Sansa. In a move that is sure to get on RIAA's bad side, you can even record live radio on the fly. Another really nice touch that greatly increases the functionality of the Sansa is a built in digital voice recorder. An easy to use button on the side of the Sansa activates the voice recording and the built-in mike captures decent quality sound. If you want to take quick voice reminders for yourself, or if you are a student wanting to justify the purchase to parents, you can record lectures in class as well.
Software & Supported File Types SanDisk includes a custom interVideo application to convert video and photo files to a format that can be displayed on the Sansa. Images files can be converted from JPEG, TIFF, PNG, BMP and GIF. Video file formats the conversion software supports the following formats; AVI, MPEG-1 & MPEG-2 in MPEG, MPG, MPE and unprotected VOB formats as well as MPEG-4 in AVI format, DAT, ASF, QuickTime MOV and WMV. Digital audio file formats that are supported are MP3, WMA and secure WMA.
The software is very easy to use, you simply browse to the files you want to transfer to your Sansa and hit the convert button. The software converts the files and writes them to the Sansa in one step.
SanDisk Sansa e280R System Requirements Minimum system requirements are as follows:
SanDisk Sansa e280R in Use I have never been that big on MP3 players. I never really got into them that much, I have an iPod Shuffle and just never felt compelled to use the thing. When the Sansa came in I immediately liked the looks of the device. Very clean and modern with nice rounded edges and simple looking controls. Not only do the controls look clean and not overwhelming, they function fantastically as well. The heart of the navigation system with the Sansa is the round thumbwheel. To navigate all you do is turn the wheel clockwise to move down the list of options or turn the thumbwheel counter-clockwise to move up the list of options. Once you get to the option you desire, you simply push the big black button in the middle of the thumbwheel If you find you are in the wrong place within the menu, you hit the rewind button to move back through the menu. You can also move forward through the menu by hitting the fast forward button and the play and menu buttons move you up and down option lists in the same method as the thumbwheel. Navigating the menu displays was very simple and intuitive. I had the system down in about 5 minutes without problems. The interface itself is very attractive with nice colors and logos. Within the menus you can control all of the Sansa options from the voice recorder to the FM receiver and more. I really liked the music navigation menus, you get a number of methods to browse the music on the device. This is very welcome with 8GB of storage capacity since you can get lots of music on the e280R. You can sort your tunes by artist, albums, songs, genres, play lists, your top rated, recordings (for voice recordings or radio recordings) and Rhapsody channels. The Sansa comes preloaded with music from several genres, and not old crap you don't want to hear the music was new stuff currently in play on the radio and popular. SanDisk included some default play lists as well to get you started right out of the box. Once you choose a play list or song, you can see the song titles in the list an when the song is playing you get the album art, band name, album title and song title if available. I transferred about 6GB of tunes over from the Best Buy Digital Music store to my e280R. When you transfer music from Best Buy you get all the information by default as well as some cool additional info such as trivia about the band or singer. Very cool stuff, I learned things on my Sansa about some of my favorite bands that I had no idea about. If your the type that likes to complain, the glossy finish on the black plastic front of the Sansa shows lots of finger prints, then so does my car. These kinds of little things never bother me, that said if you are bothered by things of that nature be warned. Best Buy Digital Music Store The Best Buy Digital Music Store is a very integral part of the Sansa e280R. The "R" in the name stands for Rhapsody, and the Best Buy store is a customized version of Rhapsody. This service is absolutely fantastic and worth every penny of the $15 per month they ask for. Not only can I transfer the digital music to my Sansa and play it anywhere and keep it for as long as I pay the monthly fee, but I can stream it on my PC as well. The digital license to the tunes you transfer over on this plan expires every 30 days, so you have to connect your Sansa back to the PC and the Best Buy Digital Music Store once per 30 days or you loose your music. The Best Buy Digital Music Store is supremely easy to navigate, it's a bit like Google for music. Type in a band name, song title or keyword and you are greeted with gobs of returns. Most every music type I wanted or could think of is available and we are not just talking singles. You can transfer entire albums to your Sansa or stream them to your PC. A few albums aren't available to be transferred to the Sansa, and must be purchased. Mostly this was soundtracks to movies, though some well known groups like the Eagles and Metallica weren't available. Best Buy's music store will work with players other than the SanDisk Sansa as well. The firmware on the Sansa is also automatically upgraded when new versions are available via the music application. The firmware upgrades are optional, so you can opt to skip them. During my testing two firmware upgrades were made and neither took more than 5 minutes to install and complete. Earphones & Sound Quality The in-ear earphones SanDisk includes are of decent quality. That said, for most of my testing I used the Razer m100 earphones because of their better sound. However, the included earphones do a decent job of playing music of different types. They could have used more bass for my tastes, and sounded slightly flat to my ears but they were livable. The different EQ levels go a long way towards customizing your listening environment. You can vary the bass and treble via the pre sets with ease. I found that with the m100's the Hip Hop setting sounded best in most music genres to me and brought nice bass response to the sound the Sansa outputs. Durability Something as small and frail looking as the Sansa e280R might not seem durable at first glance. I can assure you the e280R is much more durable than you might think. I knocked it off my desk where it fell to the concrete floor not once but twice during my testing. Not only was the finish not marred, but the sound was perfect. No effects were noticed whatsoever from the falls. My two year old daughter also made off with it once and for reasons only know to god and the two year old brain she hurled it across the room when I caught up to her. I suspect her absconding with my Sansa might have to do with the Dora soundtrack I downloaded to it to keep her occupied at the doctors office, but you never know. Nonetheless, I was sure it was ruined but surprisingly it survived with nary a mark and was no worse for the wear. All in all the Sansa is a very durable and robust device and while I wouldn't recommend letting a two year old play with it, it did survive mine and I can't say that about lots of things around my house. Video & Picture Playback I loaded about 1GB of video and images to my e280R to test this portion of the device. Getting the photos and video onto the Sansa were a snap thanks to the included software. The 1.8" LCD sure won't give you a HD type image, but you can't expect perfection on a screen this small. Images were easy to view and skin tones were natural looking. The images were pixilated a bit, but quality was decent and certainly good enough to show off at the office or to Grandma. Video quality was passable, though it was noticeably grainy and pixilated. I didn't notice overt ghosting or smearing of images on screen during playback. I found myself wishing I could download the music videos to some of the tunes I had on the player several times. Verdict I was very, very happy with the performance of the SanDisk Sansa e280R MP3 player. It sounds fantastic and has great storage capacity. The ability to store and carry video and pictures on the device was welcome, even if the quality wasn't supreme. The Best Buy Digital Music Store is a fantastic thing, and will be getting my hard earned cash even after the two months of free service that came with the Sansa expires. I really can't find glaring faults with the Sansa e280R, it worked fantastically. SanDisk has a serious contender here to the higher priced MP3 players on the market with fantastic sound and a great feature set, you really can't go wrong with the Sansa e280R.
Test System Specifications:
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