SanDisk Sansa e280 8 GB MP3 Player (Black)

This is a great product. I listen to audio books and to make it really work with them you need to download the firmware update from the manufacturer. Have heart; it is worth it. Now that I have my player updated it is GREAT!

This product does not work with Windows XP. It crashes all of the media plans (Windows Media Player, WINAMP,...). So there is no way to synchronize your play lists. There are a lot of complaints on the Sansa forums about this, but Sansa support ignores customers. I am repeating this review for the same players with different memory sizes, hopefully to help some poor person that buys this thing.

This is the second Sandisk Sansa e280 that I have purchased. Obviously I liked the first one enough to buy another one, this one for my wife. Her I-pod shuffle battery died after limited use and while my Sansa player was going strong after 1.5 years of use. We use them while excersizing, so I wanted a ram based player. It is a great little music player, and that's all I use it for. Start up was uncomplicated, plug it into the usb port, charge it up and it was ready to go. The software is easy to use. Once you have music on your computer you can drag and drop, or copy and paste, to load the unit with music. The earbuds it comes with are just okay, add a better set of headphones and the quality of the music is great. It holds plenty of music, even at lossless quality levels. We don't all have to have I-pods!

I purchased two of these players since my husband and I are both big audio book fans, and it's listed with NetLibrary and Ohio Ebooks Project as a compatible device. I've been using mine for about a month now, and recommend them to audio book fans. Excellent sound, very long battery life (which is recharged when your device is hooked into your computer), and compatible with coded audio books.

Two negatives -- first, there is no way to "bookmark" an audio book you're listening to, so when you shut the book down, it doesn't always re-start where you left off. There are, however, excellent fast forward and backup features, so it's easy to find your place again. Second, there doesn't seem to be a way to separate audio book files from music files (there are no folders), which is confusing if you have both music and audio books on your device. I found it easiest to just use another player for music, and put audio books only on this player.

Other than those two minor negatives, I'd purchase this player again with confidence.

I have had this item for over a year without any problems. At the same time my friend had bought the new nano and it froze up compared to the zero times my Sansa did.

Recently my mom washed my Sansa by accident since it was in my sweater. But once I got it out of the washer, I turned it on and it was working like normal. I even cracked open the mp3 player and it was slightly wet. The back of the screen had a few watermarks but within a day or so it was clear. If you were to wash an iPod do you think it would have made it? Probably not.

I absolutely love this mp3 player and wouldn't change it for the world.