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Blog: Gadgets The Pursuit of a Flash Based MP3 Player: No iPod?
Anh Tuan Huynh (Blog) - October 15, 2006 6:35 PM

12 comment(s) - last by Anh Huynh.. on Oct 20 at 4:35 AM

Sansa e250, iPod nano, T809

My experience finding a new flash based MP3 player

Apple’s iPod has held the majority market share of the portable MP3 player market in the last couple of years. This isn’t too surprising as the iPod sports a simple and elegant design, light weight, is quite trendy and has celebrity endorsements—a feat no other MP3 player has. There’s also the RED special edition model where $10 of each sale is donated to the Global Fund to fund HIV/AIDS in Africa programs for women and children. This is just the social aspects of Apple’s iPod.

There’s also the hardware aspect of Apple’s famed MP3 players. While other manufacturers have released technically superior players, no manufacturer has had as much success as Apple has. While the iPod may lack playback support for audio formats such as OGG, FLAC, etc… it has a feature no other manufacturer has been able to match—the dock connector. This forms the basis for a ton of third party accessories from alarm clocks, car integration, home integration, camera adapters and even bathroom accessories.

The car and home integration aspects of Apple’s iPod have always been the main reason to why I owned an iPod. The simplicity of being able to bring my iPod into the car, plug it into my Pioneer iPod adapter and have full control from the head unit, than bring it home and drop it into my Harman Kardon dock and have full high-speed control of the iPod from my receiver has always been a major selling point for me.

This brings me to my recent search for a new MP3 player. This time around I didn’t care for the car or home integration aspects as I needed something to play music while I was at the gym and walking to campus. I required a lightweight flash based MP3 player that was small enough to fit in my pocket. This would be replacing my phone as my MP3 player. Although I love my Samsung T809, the MP3 playing capabilities are quite limited, not to mention the terrible ear buds that use a proprietary connector. Nevertheless I started researching MP3 players in this class. My three primary candidates were Apple’s iPod nano 2GB, Creative Zen V 2GB and SanDisk’s Sansa e250. Pricing for the players were below $150.

After holding an iPod nano in my hand I was quickly turned off of it. Although it’s the smallest player of the three, there’s such a thing as being too small. It was too thin and light for my tastes and there wasn’t enough weight to it and felt fragile. I quickly disregarded the iPod nano and turned to the next player—the Creative Labs Zen V 2GB. I’ve never been fond of Creative Labs MP3 players as the designs never really appealed to me. The Creative Labs Zen V was no different. It was a bit bigger than I typically prefer and not too aesthetically pleasing in my opinion.

This brought me to my last choice and purchase, the SanDisk Sansa e250. I came across this player a while back when a couple of my friends purchased them and raved about it. The size is quite nice; it’s thicker than an iPod nano and weighs a little bit more—just enough to feel solid and not fragile. There’s also the addition of a microSD expansion slot for additional memory expansion, FM radio and built in voice recorder that sealed the deal. The screen and user interface are quite nice as well. Pricing was very attractive as well. I managed to pick one up from the local Circuit City for only $109.99, quite a bit cheaper than the iPod nano and still $10 cheaper than the Creative Zen V.

My experience with the player has been quite good. Unlike some other MP3 players that require a music management application, SanDisk has equipped the Sansa e200 series with two methods of copying music to the player. The first uses Play For Sure for universal music synchronization while the alternative method is to use the player as a mass storage device to manually copy and organize music. I chose the latter as I prefer my own directory structure. The only downside to using the device as a mass storage device is the lack of album art that is typically downloaded. Nevertheless I found an application called Album Cover Art Downloader that did this.

After getting the necessary album art I copied music to the player. Transfers were relatively quick across the Sansa e200’s USB 2.0 interface. I also popped in my 1GB microSD card preloaded with music from my phone as well. This was immediately detected and the music was detected. The Sansa e200 series also have limited video playback and picture viewing capabilities. Using SanDisk’s converter utility I transferred an episode of South Park and various images to the player.

With everything loaded onto the Sansa, I started playing around with it. The bundled ear buds are terrible and were quickly tossed out in favor of my Sennheiser HD570’s. After listening to a variety of music from Linkin Park to Red Hot Chilli Peppers I was quite pleased. The sound is clean and full. A manual equalizer is available to tweak the sound to your liking too. SanDisk has done an excellent job with the GUI which is simple and clean. The user interface is also simple with a scroll wheel and a couple buttons. Video playback was very smooth, albeit at 15fps. Image display was pretty good as well.

Not all is well with the SanDisk Sansa e200 series. I do have a couple of gripes with the player. In terms of build quality the overall unit is quite solid. However, the plastic scroll wheel lacks the precision of the iPod nano’s wheel. The buttons surrounding the scroll wheel could also be slightly more sensitive or bigger as well. My last gripe is with the video playback capabilities and its ability to only playback QuickTime MJPEG files. These files take up a lot more space for the quality than comparable AVC or even 3gp files.

Nevertheless, even with the gripes I’m very happy with my purchase and glad I bought something other than an iPod. The Sansa e200 series is an excellent player that is fairly priced and feature rich. It may not be as trendy as an iPod nano but it gets the job done and more.

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Sandisk Sansa

By xFlankerx on 10/15/2006 10:10:43 PM , Rating: 2

Nice pick. Even though I have a 5G iPod, I've always been a fan of Sandisk's Sansa e200 line of MP3 players. I would've picked one of those over a nano as well.

+1 for Linkin Park.

RE: Sandisk Sansa

By Operandi on 10/16/2006 12:52:41 AM , Rating: 1

Maybe people should stop and think about why the iPod leads the market; hint it has very little to do with celebrity endorsements or clever advertisements. Avoiding the Apple products because they are "trendy" is the stupidest reason I can think of.

The SanDisk is nice player but aside from the FM tuner and expandability it is inferior to the Nano in my opinion. The interface isn't as easy to navigate and use, the menus seem to be a lot of form over function, and the build quality doesn’t seem as solid.

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RE: Sandisk Sansa

By Anh Huynh on 10/16/2006 1:41:16 AM , Rating: 2

The SanDisk interface when you get down to the music selection process is no different than Apple's UI IMO. You can select songs by album, artists, song, etc..

I didn't avoid the iPod nano because it was trendy, I avoided it because it didn't fit my needs. Not to mention that my first iPod had to be sent back to Applecare within the first 3 weeks of owning it and babying it due to its superb build quality, ie the chrome part was splitting off. There are also some material quality defects on my PowerBook as well. From my experiences, Apple quality is pretty sub-par.

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RE: Sandisk Sansa

By Operandi on 10/16/2006 1:16:44 PM , Rating: 2

I'm not an Apple fanatic or anything but the anti-Apple zealots piss me off just as much as original pro Apple Zealots. I realize you are neither so I guess my comment was a bit out of context.

About the Sandisk though. The interface; it's not particularly bad but I see the bigger screen filled with over-sized "pretty " icons that basically serve no function other then to look good magazine adds, it certainly dosn't help the usability.

The player itself is significantly thicker, as take my Nano with me road biking that's a pretty big disadvantage. I can also change tracks and adjust volume while riding, I couldn’t see that happening with the Sandisk. The overall quality dosn't seem to be up to par; but that was just my inital impression.

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RE: Sandisk Sansa

By sxr7171 on 10/18/2006 2:03:44 AM , Rating: 2

Wow an example of a defective product makes the whole line of "poor build quality." Yeah then BMWs are of poor build quality, hell even Toyotas are then because I once saw one getting towed.

Also anyone who is a technophile leave alone a writer at a tech site should know that the laptops and the iPods are built by different manufacturers at different plants. The laptops may indeed have poor build quality and in fact the consensus is moving in that direction, but for iPods considering how many of them have been sold, a poorly built product would have hit the headlines already and stopped selling.

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RE: Sandisk Sansa

By sxr7171 on 10/18/2006 2:08:25 AM , Rating: 2

quote:
Nevertheless, even with the gripes I’m very happy with my purchase and glad I bought something other than an iPod.

Also people who avoid a product simply to avoid having what everyone else has are just as bad as those who something just to be in the "in crowd."

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RE: Sandisk Sansa

By Anh Huynh on 10/20/2006 4:35:03 AM , Rating: 2

I could've bought an iPod nano, but the Sansa was a better bargain and had more features I wanted. The voice recorder is quite nice for class lectures.

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RE: Sandisk Sansa

By kamel5547 on 10/16/2006 7:39:42 PM , Rating: 1

Apple leads the market specifically for the reasons you claim do not apply. iPods are trendy, and everyone wants one, not so much because they are a better product (they aren't really) or they offer more for the money (Apple has never offered deals on hardware). They buy them because they are "cool", if that is the principal thing you care about an iPod is perfect... considering the # of songs actually sold to users the iTunes store is not much of an attraction either.

In my opinion an FM tuner is a very big bonus considering how quickly you can go through 2GB of songs (depending on the encoding of course). Sorry but I just don't see iPods as superior to other products on the marketplace, on the other hand I love using iTunes to organize my mp3's :p.

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New nano?

By Burning Bridges on 10/17/2006 9:00:13 AM , Rating: 3

Wouldn't the review have made more sense if the new metal-cased nano was looked at? It would certainly make more sense since, AFAIK, that's the only version of the nano available now.

Apart from that I find apple build quality to be fine, the interface to be great, they work perfectly and are easy to use, all bonus points. However sound quality from a portable can never match up to that of a decent stereo.

Personally my choice of mp3 player would be something like the iRiver h320, if I could get my hands on one, that is ;-)

RE: New nano?

By Anh Huynh on 10/17/2006 3:48:25 PM , Rating: 2

I looked at the 2G nano in stores. The 1G nano is my roomate's and used for image purposes only.

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Similar Experience

By tradeconsult on 10/16/2006 9:21:26 AM , Rating: 2

I recently went on a similar search. I had ruined a Nano while biking. I was looking for a cheap replacement that would specifically be used while I was running. biking etc. My key criteria were 1) low cost and 2) ease of use. I also considered the creative labs unit but it seemed kind of clunky and hard to navigate. I finally settled on a player from www.cfgear.com. I use my Sony headphones with it but so far I am satisfied.

Nano too small

By Mudvillager on 10/18/2006 5:29:41 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
After holding an iPod nano in my hand I was quickly turned off of it. Although it’s the smallest player of the three, there’s such a thing as being too small.

I completely agree with this. It's something about the long-thin design that turns me off. Still bought one 1gb nano for running and other physical activities.