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June 14, 2005
Review: Sansa e130 MP3 Player
Digital Home Canada sat down last week with representatives from the SanDisk Corporation and learned the company has begun shipping its new flash based MP3 players to major Canadian retailers.
The company's second series of MP3 players, the Sansa e100 series, ships in a 512MB or 1GB models and retail for $179 and $239 Canadian respectively. The players are for consumers wanting more functionality than what can be found in the market leading iPod shuffle.
The SanDisk Corporation which makes the Sansa e130 is the world’s largest supplier of flash memory cards and sells product in every flash card format including Compact Flash (CF), SD, miniSD, SmartMedia, MultiMedia Card and Memory Stick.
If you have a digital camera, mobile phone or a USB flash drive, then there is a good chance that device contains a SanDisk flash memory card.
In 2004, the company introduced its first MP3 player and thanks to worldwide reach the SanDisk Digital Audio Player quickly became number two in market share after Apple.
This month the company begins shipping its second generation of MP3 players: the 512MB Sansa e130 and the 1GB Sansa e140 to Canadian retailers.
DHC had the opportunity to test out the 512MB e130 model.
Setting Up the E130
Inside the e130 package we found stereo headphones, carrying case with armband, USB 2.0 cable, AAA Battery and an install CD with software.
Physically, the SanDisk Sansa player is larger than most flash based MP3 players but it's still lightweight at 1.6 ounces with its single AAA battery. The company says the player will play up to 17 continuous hours on a single battery.
Once we removed the e130 from its packaging, we inserted one AAA battery into the player, added a 128MB SanDisk SD card into the right spine of the player and finally plugged the USB 2.0 cable into the player and our computer.
Our Windows XP computer automatically found the device and seconds later two removable drives appeared in Windows Explorer. The first drive was the e130’s 512 megabytes of internal storage and the second drive was the extra 128MB SD card.
Inside Windows Explore, we simply dragged the songs we wanted from our computers hard drive and dropped them onto the two removable drives. After several minutes of transferring files, we unplugged the USB 2.0 cable and turned the e130 on using the Menu /Power button on the right spine of the player.
After the unit was turned on, the player updated its internal library and we were ready to listen.
General Impressions
Overall, we found the e130 sound quality to be good and on par with other good quality flash based MP3 players. We found the user interface with its backlit LCD easy to navigate and the player allowed us to Play All or drill down by Artist, Album, Songs and year along with other groupings.
On the downside we found the navigation buttons difficult to press and at times we were unsure whether we had or hadn’t fully pressed the button. We were also disappointed at the lack of playlist support although we found that in most cases, playing songs by genre worked well for us.
In addition to playing MP3 files, the Sansa players also provide support for WMA (both secure/DRM and unsecure) and Audible file formats.
FM Radio Support
After listening to our favourite songs we pressed the menu button and switched to FM Radio mode.
In radio mode, we started off by setting up presets for our favourite local FM radio stations. Initially, we encountered some confusion we trying to set up the presets but after re-reading the relevant parts of the user manual we had our presets set up in about ten minutes. The radio allows up to 20 presets.
Once we had our stations all set, we listened to a number of stations as we traveled about the city. The reception was excellent and the sound quality good.
Summary
The current king of the hill in flash based MP3 players is the Apple iPod shuffle.
If you’re looking for pure simplicity, elegant design and the smallest MP3 player available then the 512MB and 1GB versions of the iPod Shuffle at $129 and $189 respectively are excellent choices.
If you wish to trade off a bit on size and simplicity and desire the ability to listen to FM radio, playback songs in WMA format, add additional storage and want more than random playback, then Digital Home Canada recommends you consider investing an additional $50 and look at Sansa e Series of MP3 players.
The SanDisk e100 series is currently shipping with suggested retail prices of $179 and $239 Canadian for the 512MB and 1GB models respectively and should be in stores now.
Posted by mp3fan at June 14, 2005 9:54 AM
Comments
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