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SanDisk Sansa e130
It looks like SanDisk has done something right -- the company claims to be No. 2 in the United States

DailyTech earlier reported that SanDisk was going to expand its line of MP3 players to include several new flash-based MP3 players.  Although the Sansa line will not be released until later next month, Mercury News repots SanDisk has moved into the No. 2 spot in the MP3 player market.  The company sold over a million music players in the last holiday quarter, while Apple, the top supplier of MP3 players worldwide, selling 14 million iPods during the holiday period.   

It will be interesting to see how Creative responds to SanDisk now being the No. 2 spot.

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Will Creative declare war on Sandisk too?
By shuttleboi on 2/11/2006 12:55:02 PM , Rating: 2
I wonder if Creative's president will start talking trash about Sandisk too?




RE: Will Creative declare war on Sandisk too?
By tuteja1986 on 2/11/2006 1:54:47 PM , Rating: 2
Who cares :(
No company really comes close to a quality/peformance/price of an Ipod Video 30GB :)



By tuteja1986 on 2/11/2006 1:55:54 PM , Rating: 2
edit : Product instead of company



RE: Will Creative declare war on Sandisk too?
By ashishmishra on 2/11/2006 3:25:14 PM , Rating: 2
I would say that the recently released 30GB Creative Zen Vision M gives the 30GB Video Ipod a run for its money. It has the same dimensions except that it is thicker. Plays all the DivX, XDiv , MPEG2 and MPEG4 formats. Has 4 hr battery playtime for videos & 14 for music. 262K 2.5" color screen. All for around $320 something. Thats good value.


By toonces on 2/11/2006 7:42:35 PM , Rating: 2
I'm enjoying my Zen Vision:M

It's a great DAP, I'm very happy with my choice after demoing a friends iPod 5G (after I sold my 3G iPod) - the interface is nice, the shortcut button is great and the battery life is awesome.

So it's a few milimeters thicker- that's not a huge concern in comparison to all the extra features the ZV:M has IMO.


By aGreenAgent on 2/11/2006 4:57:44 PM , Rating: 2
iPods are terrible though. I'm still so surprised they're even competing with all the others.

Poor battery life, color screen, videos etc.

Terrible.


RE: Will Creative declare war on Sandisk too?
By mindless1 on 2/12/2006 12:16:47 AM , Rating: 2
Or we could look at the other side of the coin, that every player out there that uses solid-state memory instead of a mechanical drive has better quality and performance. Remember, "quality" and "performance" have to apply to the users' needs, not just a list on a piece of paper, a feature-set. What do most people "need"? Durability, long playtime, to be able to sort and select songs easily, UMS support, support for their preferred codecs. The list goes on, but seldom does it include anything inherant in an ipod video but lacking in other players in the same price range.


By mindless1 on 2/12/2006 12:19:37 AM , Rating: 2
At this point I should mention I'm not against anyone having an ipod, as it almost looks like I'm biased against them. If it has the features you want, and the style you want, then it is right for _you_. That is very subjective two different people may have quite different preferences.


it's all about the price...
By happybob on 2/11/2006 11:22:38 AM , Rating: 3
the only reason why sandisk would overtake creative as the number 2 maker of mp3 players is because its mp3 players are much cheaper than the creatives. over the holidays, they were so heavily discounted that you could've gotten one for almost nothing! if the price is not an issue, i have no doubt that majority of people would buy apple ipods. after that, i would buy a creative mp3 player over a sandisk anytime. if creative wants to regain its position as number 2, it will have to start cutting its prices too. unfortunately all these apple competitors trying to come out with models that are directly aiming at ipods and are similar in prices are just wasting their time. unless their offerings are significantly cheaper, people will continue to buy ipods.




RE: it's all about the price...
By mindless1 on 2/11/2006 12:13:39 PM , Rating: 3
Depends a lot in what you want out of an MP3 player I suppose. Taking the pictured sandisk as an example, it has SD slot, FM tuner, UMS compliant. For a typical user, it's somewhat pointless to pay more. I'd never buy any mp3 player that uses a proprietary battery though, as it makes having a spare inconvenient and more trouble to replace in a few years. Being solid state (when flash memory based) it seems a bit silly to buy an Apple player with a finite battery lifespan, unless of course there's another feature good enough to outweigh that- and for many people there isn't, they just want straight MP3 playback.

I don't think people will continue to buy ipods. It was a one-shot gotta-have status symbol for awhile but then once all those who cared about such silly things had one, the rest of the market was looking more at applications. I don't think people want a car dock for an ipod, for example, they want their car radio to have native support for the audio files with no need to use the ipod.

If anything, I expect smaller players to do the best. It's not just cost, many people aren't looking to view pictures or videos and the extra screen size necessary to make that a reasonable proposition, makes the MP3 player larger than an mp3 player needs to be. IMO, the best compromise is only large enough to allow a miniSD card slot.


RE: it's all about the price...
By abhaxus on 2/11/2006 11:15:41 PM , Rating: 2
you obviously have no real experience in small consumer electronics.

all people ask for are ipods. all the time. i work in sales at a department store chain (think S-mart) and even though we stock a decent number of MP3 players, it does not matter what features are available in iRivers, or Rio Carbons, or Creative Zens... all that anyone wants is an iPod. And when you think about it, they do offer quite a bit for the money. people DO want to have their car stereos interact with their iPods. It's probably the most asked question ("how do I connect this to my car stereo?"). Think about it from your own personal standpoint. You buy a CD. Rip it to AAC, put it on your 60gb ipod. Now you have that CD EVERYWHERE you go, without ever having to rip it again.

The only hope for true competitiveness in the MP3 player sector is for Apple to start licensing out the ipod dock connector interface to other manufacturers. Right now there are so many ipod specific accessories it is ridiculous. I'm sure at some point Apple will do this, once they have crushed the rest of the market anymore.


RE: it's all about the price...
By mindless1 on 2/12/2006 12:11:06 AM , Rating: 2
You seem to ignore a lot of important details.

- yes those people walking into a store will ask, it's the consumers who already know a thing or two that pick their own player and buy online for the cost savings.

- No, they don't offer quite a bit for the money. In fact, for the cost they're reliatvely barren of features. I could write about cheap screens getting all scratched up too but we've covered that already.

- No, people don't really want their car stereos to interact, it's only that their car stereo can't yet act on it's own yet, which was addressed by what I already wrote, why the next evolution is not adapting dumb devices to one ipod but making those OTHER devices smarter so there is no reliance on the ipod anymore. This is only a phase, a very short period of time in the grand scheme of things.

- No, you DO have to rip that CD again if you only store it on an ipod, because you have either (or both) a failing battery and mechanical hard drive. They are also prone to be stolen far easier than a permanent device such as car stereos.

- No, true competitiveness in MP3 players is more integration into devices people already used, not having this addtional piece of gear at all to carry around or buy. For example, the car stereo, the mobile phone, both of which, if they had decent storage and playback, would easily make people happy to not buy another $200+ piece of gear or lug that extra gear around.

- I'm not trying to discount the popularity of the ipod, nor that Apple will have success with next-gen players. On the other hand, there's a limited market saturation potential for the mobile MP3 player market and the remaining market is not for a few-hundred-dollars player, not when it can be doen as well and even better in some regards for less.

People make such impulse purchases the first time or two but then become more critical of their needs, features, price vs value. Lots of fads come and go. Remember parachute pants?


Creative Zen Vision M$
By mforce2 on 2/11/2006 8:12:47 PM , Rating: 2
I read a review about that Creative product and I think if this will be the way Creative does stuff they're doomed , at least as far as audio/video players go . Creative decided that a cool product like their Zen really needs some "cool" DRM together with some "cool" M$ software to make it a smash hit. Works only with Windows and WMP ...
Apple will continue to dominate if Creative doesn't actually start being "creative" and stop cloning stuff ( even if they make it a bit better sometimes ) . Most people will just buy the original and be done with it.




RE: Creative Zen Vision M$
By toonces on 2/12/2006 12:07:33 AM , Rating: 2
it does have compatibility with DRM files but there is no specific DRM-only or WMP-only proprietary software for the Vision:M.

I can use windows explorer to add or remove any music to my DAP. As for only being windows compatible, that's true for now.


RE: Creative Zen Vision M$
By mforce2 on 2/12/2006 8:53:20 AM , Rating: 2
OK so it only has optional DRM but why did they have to put M$ software in it and why can't you just see it as a mass storage device , that would have made things much easier . I for one would rather have a player that has linux like the Archos but that's way more expensive .
Then again like I just read somewhere we live in an economic system wich is imperfect so it's not the best product that wins . Apple and the iPod has the hype going for it ...


poor playback quality.
By 8steve8 on 2/11/2006 11:25:37 AM , Rating: 2
arn't all sandisk mp3 players limited to 128kbps playback??

but apparently no one cares, or no one notices.




RE: poor playback quality.
By mindless1 on 2/11/2006 12:02:53 PM , Rating: 2
LOL, no they're not limited to 128kp.

Main limitation to them is no ogg support.


I love my Sansa m250
By huges84 on 2/13/2006 5:25:09 PM , Rating: 2
I think that Sandisk is going to hold on to that no. 2 position. From my experiencce with my Sansa m250, I can say that they know what a consumer wants. It was on sale at Best Buy for $129, and I see it online for $120-140. This thing has:

-2GB flash memory
-shows up as mass storage drive or recognized as audio player depending on setting on the player
-can use purely as a 2GB USB drive, no software required on winXP
-runs on one regular AAA battery for 19 hours
-FM tuner with 20 presets
-NO synch software required (automatic builds music library from song tags)
-plays mp3 (even high bitrate), wma, wma-drm, and audible
-has MS "Plays for sure" certification
-built-in microphone records 16k WAV files
-sleep timer
-backlight (stops working after battery drops to 33%)
-comes with cheap plastic cover and arm band
-black and white display showing artist/song/album/track no/Kbps
-comes with 8-inch USB cable, perfect for carrying with you

That is pretty much everything one could want in a flash player. The headphones are even decent quality (earbud type). The only negative thing is that it is offically windows only. But since you can make the player act completely like a "mass storage device" flash drive, I assume that it could be made to work with Linux and OSX. But I could be wrong.

Personally, I also wish it had FM recording, so I can record NPR shows (like TOTN: Science Friday). I know that is a very unusual feature. And with more and more shows having podcasts available, it doesn't really matter as much.




RE: I love my Sansa m250
By huges84 on 2/13/2006 5:40:41 PM , Rating: 2
And to add a few more features to the list now that I pulled the thing out of my pocket to look at it:

-hold switch (very important)
-has a stopwatch feature
-has a spot for attaching to a key ring (not provided) which I prolly wouldn't use since I want to be a little more careful with this thing (though I do have kept my 128MB thumb drive on my keychain for years now with no problems)


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