Great Little Device
I've owned this thing for the past 2ish years and haven't had a single problem with it. 6 months ago I bought an ipod touch just because it's undeniably a nifty gadget. 5 months ago I reverted to using my sansa express for my portable music needs. Why? It's a little difficult changing tracks in your pocket when the only thing resembling playback controls is a minimum 3 step virtual button pressing process on a glass touchscreen (not really tactile friendly). I know I'm comparing apples to oranges here, but at the end of the day it's really about the music and not so much the great potential web surfing experience you can have on a 4 inch touchscreen. Plus, with the sansa now at $26, I'm not gonna have a breakdown if it gets lost/stolen/destroyed like I might have if it was a $200 ipod.
Anyway, great little simple device. You can really beat the crap outa it and it just keeps serving up music without giving you grief. It's got buttons too.
2010-03-09
works like as advertised...
The music player works great, I bought it to use while I'm snowboarding.
My only knock on it, is after I'm done charging it or loading music onto it from my Mac, you only have a small window of time to pull it out of the USB slot before it automatically remounts itself. One time I missed this few second window and I ended up have to reset the device to get it to work again. Other than that battery lasted a full day on slopes -- plus. I often hit the select button on accident when trying to change songs. But those would be my only knocks. Nice, low cost music player.
2010-03-06
Excellent value, nearly flawless
It would be very difficult, if not impossible, to find a better mp3 player in this price range.
Having the USB connector was the first feature I looked for as it makes transferring files much easier.
The internal battery is charged while the player is plugged into the USB port of a computer, which I did not realize until after I had ordered it. The previous player I had used 1 AAA battery and I was able to use it for several days on a single battery. For me, it seems that I can only use this for one day and part of another on a full charge but I know that skipping through tracks and playing with features is far more draining. I'm betting that if you just let the tracks play it probably will give much better battery life. Of course, at the end of the day I just plug it in and the next morning it's charged and ready anyhow.
The player is very small, so portability is excellent. The expansion slot is neatly placed under the earphone jack, and takes mini-SD cards. I have a 2GB card in mine, so immediately I doubled the capacity which is nice because it's a decent price jump to the 4GB+ players. Another great feature is the FM tuner, with impressive reception and a good amount of presets. The sound quality on this player is good, but that's not something you can rate a player on being that the earphones will deliver the sound.
**I have a pair of the A4 Tech MK650 metallic earphones and they are among the best I've ever heard. They compliment this player well, as they are both very portable.**
There are plenty of features that make this player great, but ease of use is really what I enjoy most.
The controls are simple, laid out well, and easy to navigate through. I would highly recommend this player for anyone who enjoys good sound and likes the ability to easily transfer files to and from the player. There is also a voice recorder and you can record segments from radio as well.
The only thing that this player is lacking is the ability to browse folders or play only music from certain folders, unless I just haven't figured that out yet. Navigating through 400 songs takes a long time and I've yet to figure out in which order songs are placed or why so being able to only play songs from a folder I choose would be great.
2010-03-02
