SanDisk Sansa View 16 GB Video MP3 Player (Black)

Bought this 4 months ago, and from the start, video would play fine for 29 minutes... and then lock-up. Works fine as an MP3 player, but you'd get the same performance out of a $40 player. Tech Support's only fix is for me to turn it on and off endlessly in the hopes that the device will magically fix itself.

If you're looking for video, loo to Apple instead. (And yeah, it hurts me to say that that!)

This is a well-built player. The size is compact, yet the screen is not too small. The button placement and the click (ish) wheel are both intuitively placed and easy to use.
While the hardware is promising, the player suffers from poor firmware. The preinstalled firmware (01.01.06) suffers from numerous bugs. Rewinding a song does not work, and when you try to select a different song from the currently playing list, you have to start scrolling down from the top--every time. The newer version (01.02.09) fixes most of these problems but has a bug that causes the player to get only about three hours of battery life. It's a nice choice, Sandisk: buggy behavior or no battery life.
I haven't used the video capabilities, so I cannot comment on them.

While the hardware is designed very well, the ridiculous choice as far as firmware (and no foreseeable updates although Sandisk claims to be working on them) almost makes the player unusable. The Sansa line has better products.

This is not so much a review as my personal experience with the Sansa View:

I was excited by the Sansa View: it had a nice design and seemed like a sensible alternative to the ever-present ipod.

However, the Sansa view turned out to be a piece of junk. It took me (and some tech-savvy friends) a couple hours to figure out how to get my computer to recognize the player. Then another couple of hours to sync the music up. When I did get it to work, the quality was not good: even with good headphones the volume was very soft. The battery also drained quickly (~5 hours)

To top it off, my player broke. The screen went completely blank. After hours of inconclusive tech-support, I sent in my player to get a new one. The new one ALSO broke: the input to the headphones bent. This made the music less audible and created lots of static.

Needless to say, I have sent in my broken player. I will not be getting another Sansa View. I recommend the same for you.

SanDisk Sansa View 16 GB Video MP3 Player (Black) I got this player for Mother's day and I have had it for a week now, and so far it's great! It is very easy to use, I can put music files from many different sources on it, and it has great sound too. The first couple of days, I had some issues with the battery only lasting 3 - 4 hours, but after a couple of uses and charges, it is much better now. I have friends with Ipods, and I definitely like mine better, they have all had problems with their Ipods!

I upgraded to the View from a Sansa e260. I liked the e260, but I had several issues with it: (1) Synch was clumsy and didn't always work. (2) the MicroSD slot wasn't very useful, since it forced me to synch in MSC mode. (3) Video playback was unwatchable, primarily due to the poor synch between audio and video on the device.

The Sansa View addresses all of these issues pretty well. With 16 GB, I fon't need the MicroSD slot--the View synched all of my music, every video I had on my PC, and every photo I had on the PC, with 2 GB to spare. Wow!

Synch is much cleaner. Synch uses Microsoft Sync Center and syncs to Windows Media Player without a hitch. And video is not bad. The player can play WMV and MP4 files natively, without having to fool with Sansa's Media Center application. There is a bit of artifacting in movies (jaggies when a fast move occurs), but movies are still watchable.

I got this unit for planes and trains. I can throw it in my pocket without worrying about spare batteries or any of the other hassles I had with my larger screen video player. I think it's going to work well for that purpose.