[tedtropy]

I've seen this player retailing for quite abit less than the Nano at various retailers and was curious if anyone on the forums personally owns one. How is the interface? Does the amp seem to adequately drive most headphones? What's the battery life really like? Any feedback is appreciated. Thanks.

 

[darkninja67]

Here you go g: http://www.dapreview.net/e107_plugin...hp?content.264

Enjoy. It does look like a good alternative to the nano.

 

[PYROphonez]

Interface: I've used a different Sansa player. Coming from a Zen Micro, it was about a 10 second learning curve. It wasn't the same model, but I'm sure it works almost exactly the same way.

 

[TheSeru]

You might also want to consider the iAudio 6 and the iRiver Clix (2gb).

 

[Wolfsbane68]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheSeru You might also want to consider the iAudio 6 and the iRiver Clix (2gb).

iAudio 6 is HDD.

 

[Lacene]

I have the e260 (4GB), it's a very nice player: very solidly put together.

the volume output could be better - it seems a tad lower than the iPod nano I've listened to, but it's fine for my needs since I got it to use for the gym & for running, both activities that distract me somewhat from my music. I've used my sansa with my KSC75's, CX-300's & PX100's & the output is fine.

The UI does require an adjustment period, but I find that to be the case with most DAP's I've used: not every DAP has the plug-and-play ease of use the iPod has because most PC media player writers do not have the DAP's in mind when they write the software, & vice-versa, but the sansa's pretty simple: for audio files, sync thru WMP, MediaMonkey, etc., or drag & drop using windows explorer. For video use the proprietary converter software.

The biggest issues I have is the lack of a user EQ considering the cheaper-class c100 sansa's (released at the same time as the e200 series) have it, and the FM tuner could have better reception. I don't use the FM to listen to music, but rather mainly for local sports broadcasts, & talk shows. Also there's a 10 minute limit for video playback, & anything longer than that gets segmented into 'chapters'.

But for the price of the e250(2GB), which is usually less than the 2GB nano, you get a more durable player with more total capacity & more features. The initial issues of play resume and album order playback seem to be fixed with the most recent firmware update, so I'd think getting the sansa e250 would be a good choice.

 

[sinner6]

I (and my spouse) have had the E260 (4Gb) for a couple weeks. Just picked up a Gig of microSD for $29.00 at Frys.

As for the E260:

Excellent build quality to the body/screen. Buttons wheels work fine, but the wheel could "feel" better. I would have loved the same titanium material the body is made from.

The thing works flawlessly with album order, resume, and album art. I have put full length DVDs on it. All works great. As for sound quality, it's actually quite good. Sound has a smooth charachter and the bass is not overstated, but articulated cleanly and smoothly. I drove my M-Audio BX-8's (8'' studio monitors) and Sony MDR-7506's looking for Audible problems and indeed there are a couple things. Namely, every so often (maybe %30 of the time) a soft digital noise will be heard while the track switches. The same noise is present when navigating the interface and no music is playing. It does not bother me as it is quiet bordering on imperceptible and never lasts more than a second, but I would be remiss to not mention it among this crowd. My main listening headphones are Sony MDR-ex90's and the combination is enjoyable.

Aside from a couple niggling points, the unit is perfect for me, and is superior to the Nano and Samsung Z5.

My biggest complaint if I had to have one is an inability to disable the "Record" button, as I often grab the player by it thus frustrating myself. My wife, on the other hand has never accidentaly triggered the button, so maybe it's just me.

Highly reccomended accessory would be the DLO action jacket.

 

[tedtropy]

Hmm, the lack of a custom EQ is kind of surprising. I'm presently using a paltry 512MB Creative MuVo that has one, but the little player has a difficult time pushing most headphones with any real volume. My K81DJs suck through the poor thing's battery life laughably quick. It too has some feedback noise when switching tracks, but its other annoying habit is a light audible whine produced whenever the backlight is on. At the end of the day I think I'm just looking for a better quality replacement with a stronger amp - seems this could be it. Thanks for all the feedback.

 

[rockin_amigo14]

i most likely will be getting one for running purposes this summer.

 

[LaBreaHead]

I still wish the two BestBuys I went to had a model out for people to at least hold, if not play audio on or try out the navigation ... they had several boxes of these a month ago, but they were locked in a glass case and BestBuy wouldn't open a box for demonstration purposes. They were really pitching the various Samsung flash players, and of course iPods were all over the place ... and the two Phillips hard drive players were out for demo purposes, for some reason.

A month ago I was set to make an impulse buy on the Sandisk, but now I'm not so sure about it. I had a most un-Head-Fi determination not to buy it without holding it in my hand first. I'd like to get an idea of the build quality, weight, etc., then consider all the other plusses and minuses. (Thanks, sinner6, for your description.)

Also, I seem to remember reading about lock-ups -- to what extent is that an issue? I would have thought that flash players would be less prone to that, but maybe I'm just naive.

 

[Old Dave]

I also have the E260 and am very happy with it. I like the user interface very much. I find the buttons around the scroll wheel a bit difficult to push because they are so small, but this is a minor issue. One thing I have noticed is that, if the backlight goes out, you have to push a button to turn it back on before you can go forward or backward to next/previous track using the buttons, which they should fix in a firmware update. I have heard some negative comments about the scroll wheel but I like it very much. I also like the fact that when you are playing a song, the scroll wheel acts as the volume up and down.
I have never used a Nano, but everyone I know that owns one, it looks like crap because of the scratches. Sansa surface seems to be much better.

 

[Taphil]

I got a new Sansa e260 (4GB) for $155 total from Office Depot, not counting a $16 rebate. Great price. It came with the latest firmware version installed. However, it was returned two days later...

The display was awesome, bright, and vibrant compared to the iPod nano.

FM radio sounded clear, reception was good.

The metal back is nice.

The battery is easy to replace.

The front isn't that hard to scratch.

There were humming noises at the beginning and end of tracks, I guess from loading songs into memory. Annoying.

I almost never turn my iPod nano above 1/3 volume, but the Sansa's max output volume was considerably low.

The wheel thing did not turn smoothly, the tension was fairly high. Moreover, sometimes it felt rough like it was caught on something.

The wheel is raised so high that it's not easy pressing the buttons. On top of that, they're small.

Album art was a hit or miss. Album art shows up in WMP10 or WMP11, but it didn't always appear on the Sansa. I figured out you can just copy Album Art.jpg into each album's folder, but I didn't care to do it for every single album I put on the Sansa.

WMP10 and WMP11 beta are awful programs for managing a music library and transferring to a device. I like WMP10 for playing videos, but for music it's too frustrating to use. WMP11 is a step backwards like IE7.

It froze once and wouldn't respond, and resetting didn't work, so I had to unscrew the back and take out the battery.

The main reason I returned the Sansa was that navigation on the Sansa was horrible. On menus, the scroll wheel and buttons have the same freaking function! Like if you're out at the main menu and you press FF or Down, it just advances to the next item as though you turned the scroll wheel, when instead it should FF to the next song that's playing. If your out at some window, like browsing music, while a song is playing and you press play/pause, the cursor moves instead of pausing the music. Also, there's no way to access the currently playing window so you can FF to the next track or change the volume; you have to wait for it for like 10 secs before it returns to the now playing window automatically. The design makes no sense whatsoever.

So I gave up.

 

[manhattanproj]

does anyone have the same problem that taphil has with the sansa?

 

[zip22]

which one? i also thought the scroll wheel was rough, the buttons too small and too close, the album art hit or miss (i'm pretty sure it has to do with the id3 version), and the noise between tracks.

the other side of the coin is that it was freakin cheap! 4GB for $140 is amazing. the 4GB nano costs $250 ($230 after student discount).

 

[Hatebrigade]

I got my sansa from OD also, it was a solid price while on sale + MIR.

I am completely satisfied with my player except for a few issues which I havn't quite been able to figure out.

a) its been largely regarded as the single biggest reason not to buy this mp3 player and its that tracks from an album do not play in order. Ive encountered this problem, it sucks.

b) this is kind of rambling but here goes. initially when i threw some songs on there the id3 tags were unorganized so i ended up with a messy database.. So, i had one mix by DJ Adam Freeland and another by just Adam Freeland, my goal was to make them both Adam freeland, and lose the "DJ" tag. Using MSC mode I went and edited the id3 tags directly on the player, refreshed the database (unplugged the player from my comp, it reboots then rebuilds the database) and it had no effect. next I tried deleting the file off the player, refreshing, then copying the fixed file back to the player. That worked kind of,

In another instance I deleted a file off of the player (note that the only way to remove files is via the computer, the player can't delete songs itself) but the song still showed up in the database, except since the song wasn't really there it just skipped the song and went to the next one on the playlist. Then when I copied the song back to the player I then had two instances of the same song. One was the ghost entry and one was a legitimate entry.

Finally I had to delete the whole directory, refresh the player, and recopy the album. That removed one of the ghost entries, I still currently have a ghost entry on my player that I can't get rid of.

c) my third complaint is something that I'm sure other players have, and thats how it scans through a song. On this player scanning through a song means it'll move at intervals of about 10-20sec as you seek through it. This is really annoying when listening to an hour long mp3, making it a pain in the ... to scan through anything longer then a typical song (3-10minutes). I wish they made the scan a percent of the song rather then the 10-20 sec intervals.

d) one more issue that ive just recently ran across is with the video playback. okay heres another long winded story, for one the bundled software is a piece of cake to use, no problems there. I put a WMV music video on my player, it got converted to mov and played fine. afterwhich i put two MOV's on the player, again it was converted to a quicktime file. the problem arose in the playback. every 5 seconds while watching the originally mov files there would be a hiccup in sound, very annoying and made the video not worth watching. the WMV video did not have this problem. It could be a result of bitrates or whatever but I just dont know, I'm only one week in on this player.

On the other hand the buttons that ppl complain about are smaller then other players however I dont find any problem with it at all, im quite comfortable with it. The EQ could have been made better, the normal EQ sounds best to me but there are enough presets to get what you want to some extent.

Anyway Im in agreement with everyone else that they need to upgrade the firmware, if only to recognize the track # on the id3 tags.

also to the OP, I use koss plugs, koss ktxpro1s, and senheissers mx400's. The default volume (50%, and it resets to back to 50% on powerup) is in some cases simply too loud.