| SANDISK CORPORATION - MP3 PLAYER, 4GB SANSA E260 W/MICRO | 
 enlarge | Brand: SanDisk
Category: CE
List Price: $218.47
Buy New: $78.80
You Save: $139.67 (64%)
New (1) Used (2) Refurbished (2) from $54.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 55344
MPN: WMM416161
UPC: 840356843537
ASIN: B000P77M5O
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new . This shipping freight is only valid for USA continental shipmments. There will be additional air freight charge for HI, Alaska, and APO shipments. CA shipment can only use Expedited shipping method to cover 8.25% CA sales tax.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Easy to use October 3, 2007
This player is easy to use out of the box. Downloading music to it is extremely fast. Also, the FM radio reception is great and can be recorded at a touch of a button. I wished I had bought a larger GB one...oh well, I probably will and keep both handy.SanDisk Sansa Connect 4 GB MP3 Player (SDMX8N-4096K-A70)
 Beats the NaNo. June 19, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I wanted to wait a few months before writing this review - I'd feel horrible if I praised it immediately only to have it die soon thereafter. Anyway, unlike most happy owners who praise this as a great alternative to the Nano, I'm kicking myself for ever getting buying an iPod (okay, it was a present for my wife) seeing how much better a player this is. The Sansa isn't as slim as a Nano, but when you hit the size of a Zippo lighter, does every extra mm down really matter that much? It's really my first mp3 player, so much of my love stems from the novelty of being able to carry around gigabytes worth of music, having hours worth of music (culled over years) available at the touch of a finger.
I'm no audiophile, but the sound quality was good, and the Sansa's firmware makes for easy cataloguing/retrieval of your music by song title, album, artist or genre. (To get your song's identifying info just right, you should download a good mp3 tagging program; I've been happily using "mp3tag", which is available free for DL - it's simple to use and configure, but that doesn't mean that there aren't better programs available on the internet).
Transferring your music is simple - your Sansa will connect to the computer using a USB port. The Sansa uses two connection modes: MTP (which treats the Sansa like a media player to be synced) and MSC (which treats the player as an extra HD - happily enough, this mode, which I find easier to use, also allows you to use that add-on tagging software, so you get the best of both worlds; it's the only mode I use.). The buttons are bit on the thin side, and you have to be careful when using the forward or reverse buttons to scan through songs lest you also skip to the next/earlier track. You can easily scan within mp3 tracks or add songs to your "go list".
The surprise here is the video player. Though the screen is small, and pixelation is a fact of life on playback, the resulting images are easily watchable. (It's probably optimal for character dramas and sitcoms that lack any demanding visuals; the included movie, a 30-second spot likely inspired by one of the latter "Star Wars" movies, was an unfortunate choice for spotlighting the Sansa's video capabilities.) Framerate is about 15fps - it's noticeable, but it's hardly a slideshow. Video files have to be converted before they'll play on the Sansa which...is no problem at all. The accompanying software is simple and is finicky only against files with really long names. Just find the files you want on your PC, click "convert" and the program takes care of the rest. My commutes are now survivable thanks to the Sansa and hours of unwatched TV. Playback can be a problem though - if you fastforward too much, the video breaks down into unrecognizable colors, or simply freezes. Luckily, the software automatically breaks every video file down into half-hour sized chunks, so if you screw up a file and have to start over, you don't have to go that far before getting back to where you left off. Left alone, the video played well - with only infrequent skips, and few jumps between video and audio syncing.
The Sansa charges off your PC's USB port. For those not connected 24-7, a Macally charger can be had for the price of a decent pair of headphones. However, the Sansa has good endurance - I packed one on vacation and managed to not need a charger despite watching several hours of video and listening to a fair number of mp3s. With about four hundred tracks (average bit rate was probably above 120kbs) there's still enough room for about several hours of video. The Sansa isn't just a great alternative to the iPod, it's a great player all around.
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