SanDisk Sansa View 16 GB Video MP3 Player (Black)

Owning an iPod, I wanted to purchase a different MP3 as a comparison, and for my daughter. It came quickly, was easy to set up and use, and has some features my iPod doesn't have, i.e. "delete this song" on the player. When I encountered a problem with the pictures, I called the support line, they came on, walked me through the fix, and we were good!
It's also beautiful.

I would not recommend the Sansa View. First of all, the battery cannot be replaced AND you cannot send it back to sandisk for replacement. In short this means that once your battery dies the view is useless and you have to trash it. I also must point out that the player has poor sound quality with weak bass and heavy distortion when the eq is used. Also video support for the player is terrible for many reasons: 1) The player does not play some files which it should play according to its specifications 2) Furthermore the scan feature for rewinding and fast forwarding videos is terribly slow (it takes forever to get to where you want in a movie) I will admit that the radio of the view is exceptionally good and that the sound quality is passable if you don't mind weak bass, but these advantages are easily ruined by the horribly buggy interface and you should keep in mind that sandisk has not been great at fixing bugs in the past (this is why the e280 is one of the most commonly rockboxed players).

In short, anyone buying an mp3 player should avoid the view. Although it sounds like a great player because of its specs (I bought it thinking it would be great despite hearing criticisms about it and was disappointed to find that the criticisms were definitely valid.), the view is ruined by its many glitches and its poor sound quality. Personally I would recommend the cowon d2, as it has over twice the battery life of the view, solid firmware,amazing sound quality, a bigger screen, supports sdhc card support instead of microsdhc card support, supports flash games, has a dictionary, and also has a radio comparable to the radio on the View. Another player that might prove to be a good substitute for the view would be the creative zen, however I am not going to give my support to this player as I have not owned it. Trust me, the view is not worth your money, and once its battery dies you will have to throw it away.

i was a big fan of the e280 and wanted a 16gb player so i bought this. wish i hadn't. frequently freezes and you cant take the battery out to restart it like e280. the new thumbwheel is idiotic. gets stuck a lot. the old one was perfect. very frustrating considering the design is nice and features are cool but it's not worth the trouble. i'm going to give Zen a shot.....

At first the Sansa View seems like a great value. But after about a week you'll find it to be enormously buggy. The people who wrote the software clearly don't use the player.

Most of the bugs seem to be related to shuffling songs. Shuffling the library has to be the common way to use an MP3 player, right? I mean, there are iPods that do nothing but shuffle, right?

For example, never, ever try deleting a song that is playing when shuffling. The Sansa View will lose its mind. Music will continue to play and shuffle, but the display will be locked and no button will respond -- except to hold the off switch for 10 seconds so that you go through the very lengthy reboot/reset process again.

Posts in various blogs say that shuffling decreases battery life. Can you imagine that it's a power hog to randomly pick index numbers? Why?

My battery life was fine until the Feb 12 1.02.09 release six weeks ago. I used to use 1/3 of the battery in a 6-8 hour use, about what the specs say. On receiving the update, a fully charged battery suddenly was half full! And after the update a full charge now lasts only 5-6 hours, leaving me cursing many days that I should have gotten an iPod.

I keep hoping for an update to fix the shuffling problems and the battery life problems. It's been six weeks and I'm darn sick of waiting.

It's time to speak up and warn others, stay away from the Sansa View. If you want something reliable, pick something else.

I was really excited about this device. I have had 2MB Nano for two years and was ready for a flash based memory device that was compatible with Rhapsody. I enjoy the subscription model of online music more than the 30 second sample and purchase model like ITunes. The device was even more attractive in that it was expandable memory. For Rhapsody compatibility there have been no issues. It synchs fine with that. But the day-to-day use has been a miserable experience. The user interface isn't horrible, but it's more involved than it needs to be. But, you get use to anything. I would accept it if it was not for all the buggy features. The battery indicator jumps all over the place and you can never rely on it. If you wake it up to change volumes or tracks, you need to wait 3 seconds or it locks up. If you do anything to quickly it freezes and you either have to joggle the HOLD button or wait 30 seconds to a minute for it start responding. Battery life was suppose to be about 35 minutes. I get 3 or maybe 4 hours, and I never play video--just music. The unit also gets warm after an hour of play or so. I downloaded the latest firmware. Didn't do anything. I'm currently trying to reach support. Maybe it's defective, but I've heard others with similar complaints when looking for the firmware update. So, it sounds like it's more common then not to get a bad player. I'm not a big Apple person, but I think your chances of a quality product are higher than Sandisk. Don't know what Zune experience is like.