SanDisk SDMX2-1024 Sansa e140 1 GB Digital Audio Player with SD Expansion Slot by SanDisk
|
List Price: Our Price: $38.00 You Save: $91.99 (71%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Network Media Player See more digital camera details and other models |
|---|
Digital camera reviews of SanDisk SDMX2-1024 Sansa e140 1 GB Digital Audio Player with SD Expansion Slot
Digital camera Review: Excellent product
Summary: 5 Stars
This is an excellent product for the price. It is easy to use, allows music that my Phillips won't accept. Having the FM radio is great to have when one gets tired of the same music. It's light and small enough so that it doesn't bother me during my workouts. I got one for my wife too!Digital camera Review: Expandable flash player with a few quirks
Summary: 4 Stars
The Sansa E140 isn't going to win over anybody who is looking for a fashion accessory that plays music or those who tend to stop the minute they hit a learning curve. It is a nifty little flash based 1GB MP3/WMA player, expandable by 2MB with an SD card, but it has some noteworthy quirks, some of which are fixed by up to date firmware. You are going to have to decide if those quirks are enough to make you look elsewhere.
Physically, the E140 is a little less than credit card sized, and as thick as an AA battery. It's all plastic, with a screen about as big as a standard SD card. There is a centered button on the front, surrounded by four select buttons that are under the plastic face of the Sansa. The right side has an SD card slot, a Menu button and the scroll wheel up on top. The left side has a sliding switch to lock the other controls. A mini jack and five pin mini USB connector sit on top. The back of the Sansa has the AAA battery compartment with a slide on cover at the bottom of the player. The rubber covers for the USB connector and SD slot are not tethered, so you have to be vigilant or you'll lose them.
Other goodies that come with the player include a clear plastic case, armband, battery, sparse printed instructions, short USB cord, ear bud headphones and a mini CD with more detailed instructions and some offers from music/e-book vendors.
Thoughts on the above: The scroll wheel has subtle clicks when you turn it, and some folks have found it stiff to operate. I didn't find that to be true. The wheel is used as the volume control and an option to navigate the menus, if you choose not to use the buttons up front. The buttons are fairly positive. The snaps on the case are too easy to unsnap, making the armband unusable, but it is adequate to protect the player while pocketed. Sadly, there is no belt clip, so an aftermarket case is probably called for if you are going to exercise with the E140.
The ear buds are adequate, and come with three differently sized rubber covers to help get a proper fit.
So, how does the E140 operate and sound? First thing you should know is that the Sansa does not support user made play lists or folders, and since it is truly a drag and drop device with XP, that's a shame. The E140 will organize the songs for you, like it or not. The most recent firmware allows you to create a favorites list on the fly by pressing the center button while a song is playing. The categories the E140 choose for you are: Artist, album, songs, new music, genre, year and spoken word. Now, if your MP3 or WMA tags are all to your liking, all is good, but for most tag editing software will be a must. There are shuffle and repeat functions, and a play all function.
The blue backlight for the screen is bright enough, but it is tough to read the without the backlight on.
There are some preset equalizer settings, and you can adjust the equalizer, choose to use SRS WOW and 3D, TrueBass and focus for high, low, or mid sounds. The Sansa delivered solid sound with the supplied ear buds once I had it tweaked to my liking, and after reading a lot of scathing comments posted about stock ear buds in general on MP3 players, I was pleasantly surprised. Sound was improved when using Sennheiser HD201 headphones. The amount of hiss and general quality seemed to be as much a factor of the source file as what the Sansa could do, some 64KB WMAs were "hissy", most weren't. With a good file, the E140 put out good sound. Volume was loud enough without being ear splitting. Equalizer settings seemed to have a lot of effect on volume.
The FM radio worked adequately, and with the latest firmware, the player goes back to the last selected station instead of going to the bottom of the dial every time the radio is selected
There is a stopwatch function that must have been added with joggers in mind.
So, what to make of the Sansa E140 overall? The older firmware didn't support favorites or a resume function, and the E140 rightfully took lumps for this. This has been addressed. The latest firmware also arranges the songs on an album in track order, rather than alphabetically, if your tags are in order. I think a lot of the bad press that the Sansa has received is due to poor early firmware.
Power up, power down and menu choices all work rapidly enough for my taste. Ten seconds to power up with an SD card inserted, two seconds to power down, and there can be some slight hesitation when navigating but nothing drastic.
I would prefer software support for folders in the player, but you can work with the self organizer if you use a tag editor.
For me, the AAA battery and SD card slot are strong points. The alkaline batteries seem to be good for about 12 hours, lithium batteries much longer. No internal battery to charge, go bad or lose the adapter for. SD expansion is a big bonus, especially as prices for cards drop.
The Sansa E140 fits my needs, but I would hesitate to recommend it to someone who can't or won't work with a tag editor, unless they plan to rip CDs exclusively, and not work with individual sound files.
Digital camera Review: Fantastic
Summary: 5 Stars
This product is great! It has a smooth sound and has a built-in radio. It is sweet. If your looking for a good quality mp3 that dosent have movies or games or 5mb storage or pics then this will be great for you. It can hold pictures and word documents but you cant view them on it. Great price!Digital camera Review: Finally, the correct order of songs
Summary: 3 Stars
I purchased this unit a couple of weeks ago. After receiving it, I upgraded the firmware immediately because of the reviews I read about not creating playlists. After that, it was easy enough to load albums which I already had created with folders. Unfortunately I realized the e140 recognized the folders by album but the songs within would only play by alphabetical and not by the original album order. I even had the songs named with a 2 digit track number before the song title.
So, after a little dilly dallying around I figured out in Win Xp if you open the folder, click on each song track, go to properties, click on the summary tab, under track title you can change this by clicking to the right and number your tracks. It does not change the overall name of the track. When you load your album folder onto the E140 it will recognize the album folder and the tracks with the song name and play it in its original intended order (or the order you gave it by number). Whew, I was going to be extremely upset if it couldnt do this, being a musician I feel this is important to be true to the original artist.
I cant really comment on how this unit compares to others since it is my first mp3 player.
I do think the sound is lacking using the manufacturers headphones, the eq doesnt seem to change that much and the sound is generally pretty hollow, also distorts at full volume. The Wow feature is horrible and better left OFF.
The cd that comes with it is not needed for anything but annoying demos? I didnt bother to use it. Unit worked fine for me without it.
Mmm, now looking at the music "folder options" it has a listing by GENRE, going into that it notes the album I just loaded under electronic but AGAIN it goes alphabetical by song! What the heck is this units problem by always wanting to go alphabetical? It should be just like anything else if you name a song file with 2 digits in front of the song most software recognizes it that way. Thats a dissapointment. Guess I can only get the correct song order if I play the individual album one at a time. Kind of a hassle.
Digital camera Review: Fun!
Summary: 5 Stars
I have had my player for about a week and I have to say it is really nice. The sound is great and it's easy to use...What more could you want? If you want something that is just as good as the high priced deals without the high price get this one. I am VERY HAPPY with this purchase.