28.3.2007

Finally, I took the plunge and decided to buy an MP3 player: and after a lot of deliberation and reading reviews of various makes and models, I bought the E280 and so far I've not been disappointed. I wanted to steer clear of the higher capacity players that use miniature hard drives because in my experience hard drives and physical shocks don't mix!! So the E280, being a flash memory player, took my eye.The unit is sturdy, small and compact and fairly easy to use. I do agree up to a point with other reviewers regarding the menu system not being the easiest to navigate, but hey! if a fifty-something duffer like me can master it, then I reckon anyone can!The sound quality is really good - even with the "bud" earphones supplied.I've read conflicting reviews regarding the sound being either too loud or too soft with this player and I think I've worked out why this could be happening! I think it all depends on the shape of the ear canal which to an extent will determine how well the "buds" fit into your ears. If they fit well, the sound can be on the loud side, but if they're a poor fit then the sound can be quiet. I've not had any problems with the sound being either too loud or soft so I guess I'm lucky! I'm going to buy a set of noise-cancelling headphones to use with this unit, and I guess it's the only accurate way to measure the sound level.Having said that, there are two independent means of adjusting the sound levels: 1) with the thumbwheel while the song is playing, and 2) further increase/decrease can be obtained by selecting the "custom" equaliser option and increasing or decreasing all 5 sliders by equal amounts.The E280 has played everything I've thrown at it so far - including speech MP3 files encoded at 24kbit/16kHz (the manual says the E280 will only go down to 32kbit). The lithium-ion battery is supposed to be easily replaced if necessary, and it looks like you have to simply unscrew 4 small screws on the back and remove it to get at the battery. The battery life when fully charged is supposed to be around 20 hours, but I haven't used it that much yet, but reviews reckon the average is around 18-19 hours from a full charge.One important thing that isn't listed in the user guide are some of the minor specifications such as the maximum size of Micro SD card that the E280 will work with, but I've found out the unit won't work with the 64mB size or lower as these sizes use the FAT12 filesystem and the E280 will only work with FAT16 or FAT32 file systems. I do know it will work with a 1gB Micro SD (formerly known as Transflash) card though.I haven't tried using photos or videos yet, but this looks a little less straightforward than simply dragging and dropping the MP3 files into the MUSIC folder on the player using Windows Explorer (with the E280 in MSC mode) as the images & video must be converted with the supplied software to a proprietary format and then downloaded to the E280.The E280 relies heavily on Windows Media Player to create playlists which is probably why it needs V10 or higher, and it's not a complicated process, but has to be done in MTP mode not MSC mode. And as no mains charger is supplied, a USB port on the PC capable of supplying the full 500mA of power is a must (preferably via a USB hub with its own power unit) in order to charge the battery from the USB port. This also means you need to power up your PC to charge the battery AND you can't listen to any music whilst the E280 is attached to the PC. So a mains charger is strongly recommended. Amazon sell at least one type of charger suitable for the E280.So to sum up:The Pros:-Versatile navigation buttons.Well-featured menu system.Excellent sound quality.Sturdy build quality.To date the largest solid state memory MP3 player.Memory expandable with a Micro SD card. (to at least 9gB)Small size.Has both MSC and MTP USB modes (selectable via settings menu).User replaceable Li-ion rechargeable battery.The Cons:-Menu system can be somewhat confusing at first.Proprietary video/photo format.Somewhat limited range of audio formats supported (i.e. no FLAC,APE,AAC or OGG support) although MP3, WAV, and WMA (incuding the DRM version) are supported.Limited operating system support (only Windows XP SP1 or higher at present).Limited processor support (must be Intel Pentium or higher)Needs Windows Media Player 10 or higher (or some similar software) needed for MTP transfer mode for creating playlists.No mains charger supplied.The FM radio is only present in the US version.Comclusion:-Whilst there are as many cons as pros, if it's solid-state capacity and sound quality you're looking for in an MP3 player, the E280 is about as good as it gets!Edit 29/3/17: My E280 is still functioning and the (original) battery is still holding plenty of charge. I have used it for around an hour and a half each day and the only problem I have with it is the scroll wheel has become very "noisy" electrically, which means the volume can shoot up or down by barely touching the wheel. Apart from that, no problems, and I'm still using the Sandisk OS rather than RockBox.

13.4.2008

My Sansa E280 is just reaching the one year mark and as it's been a faithful little companion for much of that time I thought it was only fair to add my review.My main reasons for buying the Sansa were the mass storage driver support and the replaceable battery, I'd been looking at 8GB mp3 players for a while but been disappointed with the Creative device I'd picked up as it only worked in MTP mode. Eventually I found this too much of a limitation and it had to go back, for those unfamiliar with MTP (Media transfer protocol I think?), basically this means you have to have XP SP1 on the PC which recognises the device as an mp3 player and mainly expects you to interface through Windows media player although dragging and dropping is sort of possible.I found this too much of a limitation as it meant I couldn't use it with my work PC as a temporary flash drive or similar so the Creative went back.The difficulty I found was that most name brand players didn't support mass storage support, I wasn't so keen on going with cheaper non-brand players. However Sandisk came to my rescue with the E200 series, although it ships with MTP by default a quick dip into the menu and you can change it to mass storage which means it works just like a USB flash drive in pretty much any computer you plug it into. This is ideal for me as I can happily drag and drop my files onto it be it music or just random files I need to carry with me.Something to be aware of is that the E280 appears as two drives when hooked up, one for its own memory and one for the builtin card reader which can cause problems with some devices such as car stereos which can read mass storage devices as they only expect to see one device. On a similar note, the USB cable which is supplied for both data transfer and charging is a Sandisk proprietary one, I would have much rathered a standard mini-USB one as I'm usually carrying at least one with me.Unfortunately you can't browse the filesystem from the device itself (unless running alternative firmware), everything is based on the tags which I do find an annoyance although I am better these days at making sure I tag music properly.The E280 itself is nowhere near as tiny as the Ipod Nano series but on the other hand it's still reasonably small and I've not found the size or weight an annoyance, it easily slips into a pocket without being a noticeable distraction. The build and materials feel quite solid and despite a year of use my E280 still looks virtually unmarked. The only problem I've had is that dust has crept into the screen slightly, it's not enough to be an annoyance but probably something I'll need to get cleared out.The screen is reasonably large and bright to suit the task of mp3 playback, I can't say I've tried images or video on it as it seems a bit small for that. I'm not too keen on the interface which blatantly rips off the Ipod interface, it works fine but I'd rather Sandisk hadn't just lifted the Apple interface. The tactile scroll wheel is fine to use though and easy to use in low light thanks to it lighting up.I've generally been pleased with the batterylife in that I don't need to worry about charging it before I need to use it each time. As it's approached the year mark I have noticed it not holding the charge quite as long so I ordered the official replacement kit from Sandisk on Amazon which I was pleased to find was just ten points. Four screws and the back is off then it's a quick swap out, cover back on and the E280 is as good as new for batterylife.Audio quality sounds great to me, I'm no audiophile but as a portable mp3 player I've never felt it inadequate in that area.The micro sd card reader is a good idea but as it doesn't support sdhc you're limited to just 2GB which is a shame as micro SD is reasonably cheap these days. It would also mean it could share its memory with my phone (Nokia E90) so I could easily move music between them but on the other hand 8GB is a reasonably amount of memory.In short I think the E280 is still well worth considering mainly because it will work without additional software on most operating systems and the easily replaceable battery means it will last a while. The main downsides from my point of view consist of a non-browsable file system, non-standard USB cable and no SDHC support. The biggest praise I can give the Sansa is that I still use mine, I have a tendency to 'upgrade' items fairly often but I've not seen anything on the market which I would consider changing to, the new Sansa view does not have proper mass storage support.

20.7.2007

Having been using a mini-disc player for the last 7 years or so, I finally decided to upgrade to an mp3 player. After a lot of research, I finally decided on the Sansa e280; principally because of the price, the 8Gb internal memory, the microSD card slot, and the fact that it wasn't an ipod. I wasn't too fussed about the video and radio features, but they were added bonuses as far as I was concerned.I really like it, it's fairly sexy looking and the case has a good solid feel to it; not flimsy at all like some mp3 players I've seen. Also, the navigation system is slightly easier to use than the ipod nano series (I bought my girlfriend one last year). The menu's wrap around,so you don't have to cycle down all the way to the end of a list to get to the last song; you can just cycle up from the beginning of the list. The rotating navigation button is mechanical (not a problem for me) and a little plasticy, and the surrounding buttons could be a little bigger.The quality of the sound is exceptional (as good as an ipod), although I am using a different set of headphones from the ones supplied. There is a 5-band equaliser which is pretty good, and it has a whole bunch of presets. However, one minor gripe is that you can't see the equaliser settings for the presets, but I use a custom EQ setting anyway.Regarding the device startup time, the e280 takes between 5-10 seconds to finish booting. However, if you have charged the device using the supplied USB cable, when you turn it on after the charge cycle it will do a full system restart which causes the database to refresh itself (presumably because it has to assume that you may have added new files to the memory). The database refresh can take a few minutes depending on how much music you've uploaded. Note that it will only do the database refresh once after you've had it plugged into the USB cable and not every time you turn it on as was intimated by one of the other reviewers.I haven't tried plugging in a micro-SD card yet, so I can't comment on the additional time it takes to refresh the database with music on the SD card. However, I don't think the e200 series is compatible with the new high-density micro SD cards (4Gb+) that are becoming available. I believe these use a FAT32 filing system rather than the FAT16 for normal SD cards.All in all, if you're looking for a large memory flash based mp3 player, it's an absolute bargain.---- UPDATE ----The e280 with the stock operating system is NOT compatible with micro-sd cards of size greater than 2Gb. I have a 2Gb card installed and the startup time is horrendous (>1 minute), as it checks the contents of the card at bootup.Having said that, I installed an alternative OS, RockBox. This is an awesome OS, and works fine. It's fully customisable and you can choose from any number of wizzy interfaces. More crucially, it also allows high density micro-sd cards to be used, so you can have 8-32Gb of card memory as well as the inbuilt 8Gb... Imagine 40Gb of flash memory mp3?! RockBox also extends the audio file compatibility - you name it, Rockbox can play it.Startup time for the Rockbox OS is about 4 seconds, even with a full micro-sd card fitted. I had no problems installing it, and you can also boot up using the original SanDisk OS (I recharge the battery on my e280 and transfer music using the SanDisk OS), and the sound quality is just as good as the original SanDisk OS.[...]

24.6.2007

I bought the Sansa 280 as a replacement for my Sony NW-HD5, which failed terminally (probably the hard drive) after 18 months. I was dubious about moving down to 8GB from a 20GB player, but wanted to pay less than for a large capacity hard drive player, and wanted something running flash technology, because I'm hoping it will last a little longer.Early impressions are that the Sansa feels solid, looks smart, and is pleasingly, but not annoyingly small. Using Windows Media Player makes ripping and downloading pretty simple, and ripping is certainly quicker than using Sony's Sonic Stage software - it also means I can transfer MP3's on any computer through to other players or e-mail if I so wish,because the tracks aren't encoded via generic software. Sound quality is good - I'm playing in car, but my benchmark is the Sony, which I bought because of its reputation for sound quality - and the volume output from the Sansa is certainly considerably higher.I'm looking forward too to the increases in effective capacity offered as the price of the micro SD cards falls - these can be used in the Sansa's expansion slot to increase its effective storage capacity - and of course you can accumulate several of these, and swap them in and out. At present, a 2GB micro SD card comes in at about £10-11, and already 4GB cards (Sandisk's own) are on the market, albeit presently at nearly £40. There are also a good range of accesories available for the Sansa - covers, cases, mains chargers etc - which is a refreshing change from the Sony.With these now down to under £90, they do seem a bargain - good quality, smart, easy to use and flexible - and with the expansion slot, to some degree future proofed. I haven't used the video or picture capabilities of the player yet, but even as an MP3 player, this seems hard to beat, especially without the risk of a frail hard disk drive. Sandisk have been amongst the leaders in flash memory for some years, and this does give me confidence in the durability of the unit, but I guess time will tell on that. So far, so good.Further to the above, I've had a chance to use this on the train, and both volume and sound quality are more than adequate - less than half volume was required to hear everything in the music clearly, and the quality was certainly well up to the standards of my old Sony - probably better, because clarity was much improved due to better volume.The failure to recognise an artists' name and to misplace an album when searching under artist is actually due to a quirk of where the Sansa looks to find the artist information from the Windows Media Player database - it looks to 'featured artist' for each track, and not the overall artist name on the album - so if whoever loaded the album on the WMP database has failed to fill in the 'featured artist' category, or has used it for all the individual contributors or songwriters, for example, you may 'lose' the album - though it will still be there in the album list, and under an unknown, or unexpected, artist listing. Edit the 'featured artist' category to the correct artist name, and you are away.

6.10.2007

After running around with a really heavily aged Creative Zen Micro for almost coming to 2years (I think its been 2 years anyway! feels god awfully long!). I finally Decided it was time for an upgrade after my Creative Zen Micro started having trouble with the battry - Id charge it up & make sure that i powerd it down completely before putting down (I always ran it docked into my pc/laptop)& when id turn it on a few hours later it have no power whatsoever even after seeing it was fully charged less then 3-6hrs ago. this happend 3 times & I started getting worried & pissed off that id be stuck on a long commute around london with a dead MP3 player.so not wanting to surrender my ears to thescreeching if the london underground & daily haberdash of people during peak & rush hours I went ahead & orderd me one of these.Prior to putting in a order i found out that a firmware update would work wonders adding extra/new features to the player, most important feature being the 5bar Equilser which i have to say rocks my socks after a little tweaking.the preprogrammed sound EQ profiles are not to good to be honest & within reason they could have been because of my headphones but I have tried out other headphones with this mp3 player. even Shure E2c's & yeah the preset profiles leave a lot more to be desired often cutting down a lot of the volume no matter which profile you ran. a problem that is fixable with the 5bar Eq so thumbs up for that.The player itself is pretty sleek, roughly the same size as an ipod nano except a little thicker. its pretty light. i dont even notice it anymore & it doesnt try to pull down my jeans like the Creative Zen Micro does when I get hot & sweaty so that is another blessing for me.The controls are pretty simple to use & obviously some people will complain about it & compare it directly with an ipod but hey if sansa were able to use the ipod's touch features then this would defo be a player which everybody should have instead of an ipod. it has much better features then an ipod & yes i would like to say that it works a lot lot better then an ipod which it does a lot of the time but the player itself is prone to a lot of 'freezing' id upload some music to it. disconnect it & it would freeze up for a good 5mins & theres nothing you can do about it as it does not have a reset button which really makes this player lose 1 of its 5 stars. - buggy firmware & no reset button. as far as i have read the player has always been prone to crashing/freezing even since the early days when it was released & firmware updates have fixed a lot of bugs but mine still keeps crashing/freezing up now n again at random times usually right after ive uploaded music & disconnected it. at times it may be a little slow to respond to the controls, hopefully a future firmware update will fix that. asside from those negative points i cannot fault this product at all, a top class product with great features & better then the ipod nano as well as cheaper

3.12.2007

Having spent a lot of time researching the various mp3 players on offer I settled on the Sansa e280 and I am delighted with my choice.Simple to use and with more than enough capacity for most mortals, this really is fantastic value for money.I also bought the 5-piece travel kit and the sturdy travel-case, together with the leather mp3 holder and clear-plastic screen-protection, are well worth the money to protect your purchase.I am an avid audiobook fan and I have found the Sansa e280 a most welcome companion.If I have a criticism it is not with the mp3 player, but with Windows Media-Player (and numerous others I have tried) which I don't find particularly easy to use.I have overcome this by preparing the tracks (as detailed below) and simply dragging and dropping the items from my laptop into the appropriate folder within the mp3 player.If I can offer a tip to prospective (and possibly current owners), it is simply that if you intend listening to multi-track audiobooks or courses ripped from cd's that need to be played sequentially, do yourself a favour and become familiar with the 'Properties' and 'Advanced Properties' right-click menu available for each track ripped to your pc.I have found this the easiest way to ensure the tracks are played in their correct order. It does take a little effort to rename the tracks and set the properties up correctly, but it is well worth it to ensure the tracks are played sequentially, and you only need to do this once - ever. The properties menu is where the Sansa gets its information from to list the tracks by genre, in a specific order and by artist - merely renaming them doesn't necessarily result in sequential playback or accurate listing.You also need to put the tracks inside 2 folders which I recommend you name identically. For example, lets say you want to listen to a Sherlock Holmes audio book. Create a folder called Sherlock Holmes, double click to open it and create another folder inside the first one also called Sherlock Holmes. The audio files should then be copied / cut and pasted into this second folder. Drag the lot across to your Sansa Media folder and if you have set the properties up correctly, the music is listed correctly.Doing it this way may seem a long way around but I have found it easier than struggling with the various media players on offer. Try both ways however, and choose the one you prefer.It's worth mentioning that if you are only going to play music and you don't care in what order, the above can largely be ignored as you can make up your playlists on the Sansa as you go and it is very simple to do so.The video conversion software which comes with the Sansa is very easy to use and I have put several items on the player although the routine is different than the one described above.In summary, this is a 5-star piece of kit and I highly recommend it.

25.10.2007

After searching for ages and looking around Amazon for the best deal the Sansa seemed to be the best for the price and the storage capacity. It was very easy to set up and I got to grips with the controls very easily. However there are some good points and bad points about the SansaGood- It looks brillant with the blue lighted wheel (better than the overhyped ipod)- Raised scroll wheel feels much better than my previous ipod- The sync with Windows is easy to use- The charging system is a good idea (if you are constantly on the move with your laptop)- The battery life is very good- The controls are simple are easy to use- Capacity is great for the price- The expandable memory ensures you can

11.11.2007

Not bad for £100 (more or less what I paid) but for less than £80 it's a steal.I've never bothered trying to put video on it (why bother trying with such a tiny screen) so I cannot comment on that, but for music it's fine. As other reviewers have said, the supplied earphones ARE awful - every bit as low quality as the Apple ones, but an upgrade to Sennheiser CX300s mean my Mp3s (ripped at 320kbps) sound every bit as good as any personal audio device I've ever heard, and as good as my trusty Sony Minidisc player that knocked every other Mp3 player into a cocked hat.I bought the Sansa because I didn't want extra device specific software clogging up my computer, and to just drag and drop my files with Explorer.

24.12.2007

Love my machine, glad I bought it, slightly hesitant to recommend.First the good. It works with media player which picks up ripped CD's from all 4 users of the PC (try doing that with an ipod/itunes). Album art - maybe. Hit and miss. Does hold nearly 2000 songs - most of my collection. Uploading pictures and (admittedly) small videos (mostly viral adds) is an absolute snap.The problems. Dont like earbuds (wires stiff, caught mine on a door strikeplate and broke, replacement Seinhausers are brill but £30). DID have the freezing problem, jewellers star screwdriver and unplug the battery cured that. Have got a funny where one track has gone 'bad' and stopped it working altogether.

28.10.2007

Seen a few bad reviews for this product since buying mine but did not want to review straight away as I wanted to see what it was like to live with. Generally very happy with it. Easy sync to WMP10. Sound quality very good. I have tried through the supplied headphones and some quality Maxell ones. Have to disagree with a previous reviewer as supplied headphones are much better than the iPod ones I have tried although I never really get on with in-ear stuff as I find them uncomfortable. The User interface is not the best but it does not take long to work out. Deducted 1 star because there is no facility for bookmarking which would be useful for ebooks or podcasts although it does remember where

18.7.2008

I recently got this product for my birthday after debating for a long time on whether or not I really needed an MP3 player at all. After owning this for about a month or so I now realise how much I appreciate it.Having never owned an MP3 player before I took a long time in trying to choose the right one for me; It needed to have lots of space as I have a LARGE cd collection and plenty of battery life. Also the price needed to be right. After careful consideration I settled on this and I am very happy with it.Reading some of the reviews on here I worried about whether I could operate the player with ease as I read that some people had had problems.

19.4.2007

Neither my wife or I have had an MP3 player before but as she now works in a noisy office she wanted one to help cut out the backgound noise while trying to concentrate on her sometimes difficult work.After reading all the previous reviews and the recent Which? report I decided to get an E280 - especially after the price on Amazon dropped £25 overnight between thinking about it and actually ordering it! £100 is brilliant value for such a size player and it feels really nice to use and so easy I still haven't read the manual, just drag and dropped 60 CDs (821 tracks) worth onto it at max 192kbps quality and it's still only two thirds full!Not interested in the photo/video capability just music

24.3.2007

Bought this about a month ago, never had an mp3 player before, bought this mainly for listening to, through a radio transmitter in the car and through a stereo, I don't use the headphones much at all, the software works fine and is very easy to use, took me about 10 mins to put a 30 min episode of blackadder on it, which for some may be long, but I don't mind, music is easier, simply dragging and dropping from windows my music folder to music folder on the sansa, sorting and such on the sansa is pretty much the same as in media player, the buttons around the dial are not the easiest to use, often have to dig in with my finger nail to press (i don't have fat fingers).

7.5.2007

I did not want to purchase an iPod, and the computer magazines gave the SanDisk Sansa five stars. I bought the e280 8GB version, and it has been an excellent buy.I did change the earphones for some Sennheiser OMX52 ones, as I did not like things sticking in my ears. The OMX52 clip over the ears.I have had one or two glitches with the software, when transferring all my MP3 files in one go, but things seem OK when transferring the odd MP3 file.Getting the MP3 tags correct, and setting up the album art JPG files takes a bit of working out.The computer magazine writes-ups often said the controls were fiddly, but I have found them OK. The blue ring does light up brightly,

16.1.2008

extremely reliable and easy to use. I use this soley to listen to music so i can't comment properly on the video facilities. Anyway, for music this is the best i could of hoped for. NO additonal software required and syncs perfectly with windows media player so i didn't have to convert all my music tracks. You simply drag and drop songs into the 'sync' folder in windows media player and it will then be on your sansa e280. I've had mine now for just under a year and haven't noticed any slow down or any problems at all. Battery life is extremely good, better than any Ipod i have used and it charges automatically if you plug it into your computer or, as i own and xbox 360,

SanDisk Sansa e280 8GB - Reviews

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