evh7
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Aug 28, 2003
- Posts
- 44
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I was considering ordering either a 1GB Cowon G3 or U2 (G3 was winning because of the replacable battery and long battery life), but, instead, I picked up a SanDisk sansa c150 2GB flash player last night at Best Buy on a whim -- I'd gone there because of a rumor that they had XBox 360 Premium Kits in, which turned out not to be true. The c150 was $159 with a $10 instant rebate (which ends 3/25) so I ended up spending about $163 with tax, which seems to be not bad for this player; I see slightly lower prices for it online, but it's not really in stock in many places, and I wanted the option of taking it back with no arguments or shipping if I wanted to. The G3 would have been $35 less, but I got a whole gig for the price difference.
This is a much better-looking device than the the earlier Sansa players. It looks a bit like the U2, except more bulky, obviously, because of the battery. There's a silcone case available, which I considered but did not purchase. It also comes with a lanyard so you can wear it around your neck, something I strongly suspect I'll never do. But you never know.
So far, after a few hours of trying it out, I'm happy with the player. It's got a cute little color screen that's easy to read, runs on a AAA battery (they say 15 hours of battery life; we'll see about that), and a fairly decent FM tuner, not the best FM radio ever, but okay. It records FM and has a mic on it, and I've tried out neither of these things. I suspect the mic sucks, because why wouldn't it? It also displays pictures. The sample pictures looked good enough, though extremely tiny; I deleted them immediately so I could put more music on it.
I think this sound is pretty good on this thing; I've listened to it using my Grado SR80s and my Shure E30Cs and I'm pleased the sound quality. My 192 bit songs sounded great, the 128 songs sounded a little less great, no surprise. There's an equalizer with custom settings too, so you can shift things around to your liking. Maybe the Cowon products would sound better? I don't know, these things are so subjective anyhow. I had hoped to listen through my bus ride today, but sat next to a chatty person who had a lot to say to me, so I still haven't gotten to spend the kind of time I'd like to listening to the thing.
The menu system seems to be driven by id3 tags. I thought I had mine pretty much in order, but apparently I didn't, so some of the menus are a little bit of a mess for me. I'll need to work this out with some tag editing.
My biggest problems with the player come from user error, I think.
This is an MTP device, and I'm not sure I quite understand it. I've never used MTP before, and it's slightly befuddling to me. When I connect it, my XP computer asks me if I want to sync it using Windows Media Player. I didn't want to, but I tried it once, trying to be open-minded, and, sure enough, I didn't like it. I ended up deleting everything and using drag-and-drop to add songs in a way that made more sense to me.
There's also a few files it wouldn't play correctly, and I don't think there's anything wrong with the files. They're low bit rate, 32-bit speech files, but they start to play and then resolve into a high-pitched squealing noise. That's unpleasant. The device plays some of my other 32 bit files, so it's not simply the low bit rate that's causing the problem. I suspect it has something to do with the transfer protocol, and I don't know enough about that yet. Maybe somebody here does.
When I connect my player to my PC in MTP mode I see the icon in my desktop tray for only a second. If I click it, or if click initial box that asks me if I want to sync with Windows Media Player or take no action, the icon disappears. I can still see it in my My Computer folder and it shows up as an audio player, and I can add or delete files, or I can sync it with WMP, but I can't find anywhere to make sure I'm safely disconnecting it when I pull the plug on it.
I'd prefer if I could use the device like a UMS device, and it does have an MSC mode, but when I looked at it the file structure was different than when it was in MTP mode. I'm sure there's someplace I can learn more about this stuff; I assume I'll be able to figure this out.
Overall, though, I think this is going to work out. Wanna see some pics?
This is a much better-looking device than the the earlier Sansa players. It looks a bit like the U2, except more bulky, obviously, because of the battery. There's a silcone case available, which I considered but did not purchase. It also comes with a lanyard so you can wear it around your neck, something I strongly suspect I'll never do. But you never know.
So far, after a few hours of trying it out, I'm happy with the player. It's got a cute little color screen that's easy to read, runs on a AAA battery (they say 15 hours of battery life; we'll see about that), and a fairly decent FM tuner, not the best FM radio ever, but okay. It records FM and has a mic on it, and I've tried out neither of these things. I suspect the mic sucks, because why wouldn't it? It also displays pictures. The sample pictures looked good enough, though extremely tiny; I deleted them immediately so I could put more music on it.
I think this sound is pretty good on this thing; I've listened to it using my Grado SR80s and my Shure E30Cs and I'm pleased the sound quality. My 192 bit songs sounded great, the 128 songs sounded a little less great, no surprise. There's an equalizer with custom settings too, so you can shift things around to your liking. Maybe the Cowon products would sound better? I don't know, these things are so subjective anyhow. I had hoped to listen through my bus ride today, but sat next to a chatty person who had a lot to say to me, so I still haven't gotten to spend the kind of time I'd like to listening to the thing.
The menu system seems to be driven by id3 tags. I thought I had mine pretty much in order, but apparently I didn't, so some of the menus are a little bit of a mess for me. I'll need to work this out with some tag editing.
My biggest problems with the player come from user error, I think.
This is an MTP device, and I'm not sure I quite understand it. I've never used MTP before, and it's slightly befuddling to me. When I connect it, my XP computer asks me if I want to sync it using Windows Media Player. I didn't want to, but I tried it once, trying to be open-minded, and, sure enough, I didn't like it. I ended up deleting everything and using drag-and-drop to add songs in a way that made more sense to me.
There's also a few files it wouldn't play correctly, and I don't think there's anything wrong with the files. They're low bit rate, 32-bit speech files, but they start to play and then resolve into a high-pitched squealing noise. That's unpleasant. The device plays some of my other 32 bit files, so it's not simply the low bit rate that's causing the problem. I suspect it has something to do with the transfer protocol, and I don't know enough about that yet. Maybe somebody here does.
When I connect my player to my PC in MTP mode I see the icon in my desktop tray for only a second. If I click it, or if click initial box that asks me if I want to sync with Windows Media Player or take no action, the icon disappears. I can still see it in my My Computer folder and it shows up as an audio player, and I can add or delete files, or I can sync it with WMP, but I can't find anywhere to make sure I'm safely disconnecting it when I pull the plug on it.
I'd prefer if I could use the device like a UMS device, and it does have an MSC mode, but when I looked at it the file structure was different than when it was in MTP mode. I'm sure there's someplace I can learn more about this stuff; I assume I'll be able to figure this out.
Overall, though, I think this is going to work out. Wanna see some pics?
