Electronics : Sandisk Sansa e280 - 8Gb MP3 & Video Player

Rating: - How it REALLY is....
This is a great mp3 player, and some of the stuff said about it is unjustified, here's my breakdown of some things....

VOLUME - In settings there are two volume options, normal or high. For me, i rarely use it much beyond half way on the normal setting but if your in a noisy environment i could see you possibly needing the high setting. BUT - the max volume is immense and you would never want to listen to it that loud!!

SORE THUMBS r.e. SCROLL WHEEL - I don't get this one, its really easy to move around, no harder than the ipod, so don't worry about this!

BUTTONS AROUND THE SCROLL WHEEL - This criticism is justified, they are quite small and not easy to press, but they don't annoy me and i rarely have to try more than once to press the button.

BOOT UP TIME - It does take a while, but by the time i've fiddled around putting my headphones in its turned on, so no problem here.

SCROLL WHEEL - It is easy to use, and probably more accurate than using the scroll wheel on the Ipod Nano in my experience. However, from the pictures i was imagining it to be a solid silicon type circle, but its plastic and mine wobbles a bit in its casing. Not to the same build quality of the rest of the player, which is a shame, but it works perfectly, and it lights up blue - you can't argue with that!

RADIO - Yes, you won't get a radio unless you get one from america. But i don't really listen to the radio, so that wasn't a problem for me.

VIDEO PLAYBACK - I was pleasantly surprised about this. The size of the screen, although small, is large enough to get a decent picture, and the playback is surprisingly good. I've watched episodes of the Simpsons, South Park and Bottom (80's comedy) on it, and its great! I'll have to try a film at some point. In your face nano!

ITS NOT AN IPOD, AND IT WORKS - Yes!!!! Be different!

SOUND QUALITY - I found i had to change the EQ settings to my liking, but after that, the quality is VERY GOOD.

CHARGING THROUGH USB - You CAN charge it when your computer is TURNED OFF. YES! you can. As long as you don't turn your PC off at the wall, then the power still goes to the USB's. I'm not sure if you have to have the PC on when you start, but i don't think so. This was a nice surprise for me, and i'm glad i didn't buy a mains charger when i first got it.

BATTERY LIFE - Very long.... i think i've only had to charge it once in 2 1/2 months use. The times stated are accurate.

SCREEN - Lovely and bright and vibrant and big and woo!

BACKLIGHT TURNING OFF TOO QUICKLY- Another thing that can be changed in the settings.... duh.

TRANSFER OF SONGS/SOFTWARE - Its easy to put music across using media player, or by just dragging and dropping. And the software bundled converts videos in to the required format and transfers them across to the player quickly. Thumbs up.



That's all i can think of, i give it 5 stars, it exceeded my expectations.

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Rating: - EXCELLENT
Love this player 8gb, good price, user replaceable battery, good battery life, drap and drop both ways, not stuck to itunes. what more can i say. Get a decent set of headphones because the ones you get with it are not all that. Gonna get one for the wife for here bday too.

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Rating: - Great little player
I bought this because I wanted something that would work well with my WMA files, and it does, superbly. Sound is excellent, user interface is comfortable. I don't much care about the radio feature, that's not why I bought it. Love it to bits.

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Rating: - e280 Could be so much better
Recently brought e280 with FM radio and am a little dissappointed with the product for following reasons:-

a) Poor firmware which is restrictive and cumbersome in use - it takes it upon itself to reorganises your music files to suit it's, not your own order. You may want to bunch together a group of instrumental tracks for instance, but it will break them up by original artist and/or album.
b) Import/creation of Playlists does not seem to work or is buggy at best.
c) Similarly import of album graphics is very hit or miss and fails most of the time.
d) File transfer capacity seems to be limited to the amount of free memory in your PC. ie if you want to transfer a 1Gb using the device make sure you have 1Gb of free memory (not total) memory capacity on your receiving PC or else it fails. On the other hand you can split your file into smaller chunks but this is time consuming and why should you have - other makes don't have this problem.
e) It is very slow starting up.
f) The highest sound setting can barely be heard when travelling in noisy environments such as an underground train.
g) No simple text or list creation/view facility.
h) No ability to assign station ID to FM radio presets.
i) PDF product manual is not complete and has missing sections/information

Overall: Good hardware let down by poor software. If it had the iRiver firmware or something equivalent it would be great. I can't believe the review by the user who claims to have had an iRiver before is genuine as the iRiver I had previously knocks the Sansa's for six in terms of it's firmware usability. Just hope later firmware upgrades to the Sansa address these issues.

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Rating: - Nearly
A great little player which is let down by lack of stand-alone charger and missing radio. Why they did they not just disable the record-radio function instead of removing the radio software?

Playback is loud enough, I work on stages and have a good understanding of noise levels.

Purchased a i-nique SportsGrip silicone case which is a nice robust skin for the player.

My only advice is import if possible to get the radio.

Mick