SanDisk Sansa e250 - 2GB MP3 Player - with Music & Video Playback

I bought the e260 a few months ago.

The sell points for me was expandable memory, a replaceable battery, being able to plug and play (and drag and drop) with windows xp rather than being tied into using itunes with Ipod. Its also a fair bit cheaper than the ipod and for some reason I just wanted to try something other than the ipod. Also, other reviews I read said the sound quality was good.

If you buy one, be sure to upgrade your software! (download a program at sandisk.com that does this for you) until I upgraded I found my pc ran very slow and didnt always 'see' the sansa when I plugged it in, there are also some major improvements in the new software.

Some of the other reviews complain the sound volume is too low. This is true but with upgraded software, there is a high volume setting, which makes it quite loud and the volume can be controlled much better. The Sennheiser cx300 earphones, which improve the bass significantly (but with a small loss in treble, which can be improved by upping the treble in the EQ) are noticeably louder than the standard earphones at the same volume level. With these two improvements I doubt anyone would still have the same complaint nor complain about the sound quality when listening to rock,pop,rap or electronic music.

I was able to compare the sound quality with an Ipod shuffle. Initially the sound quality of the shuffle was much better, much more treble and bass response and the ipod earphones sounded better and fit better (the fit also improves the sound). I wasn't too happy about this, but selecting "pop" in the equaliser and using the high sound setting, the sound quality is quite similar, if I used the ipod earphones on the sansa. With the Sennheiser earphones, the sound is transformed quite a lot on both.

There is no FM tuner (US only!)

I find the selector wheel and buttons, like other reviews a bit cheap feeling, buttons are a bit small and not easily pressed, but it doesn't take long to get used to it, and you can operate the pause and skip buttons through your clothes with practice, which is a useful.

The head phones are quite shoddy, you will certainly want to buy new ones, since they arent comfortable, dont fit so well, fall out easy and don't sound that great.

Once you have the upgraded software, dragging and dropping music is easy and less hassle than messing around with itunes.

Its worth getting more space than you think you need, I have about 390 songs and thats used 2GB. Any video clips chew up space very quickly about 250Mb for 25min.

Video quality is good, but it chews the battery and memory space, it takes a long time to convert a video onto the player (about 1 min for every 2 min of video). The screen is very small for watching a movie, its ok for cartoons though. Video was less of a benefit than I though it may be, but its nice to keep a little clip on in case you ever want to watch it.

A very annoying feature is the random play, something which is quite important when you build a large amount of music- It doesnt work properly. It often plays the same song twice, and even the same one in a row!!! It also misses many out before it replays the same ones. Software updates havent corrected this.

Overall the sansa is a good buy, if you don't mind having to fiddle around a little to get the best performance and put up with a few 'stuff ups'. The ipod is a bit more `ready to go' and refined but it doesn't have the selling points at the top of this review, which may not be worthwhile for some.

I've had this e250 for one day now and I'm very impressed by the build quality and the audio quality of this product. This is my first mp3 player and I'm very happy with it. Its easy to use and once I changed the USB setting from the default MTP mode to MSC mode I was able to see the e250 as a usb drive from my Windows 2000 computer and copy mp3 files across from my PC into the Music directory with ease.

When you are connected to the PC you cannot listen to music from the e250. So you cant run the e250 "plugged in" to the computer via USB for power and listen to music at the same time. That surprised me but maybe that's just normal for mp3 players.

Unplugging the connection "reboots" the e250, then you wait several seconds while it scans its music directory for new mp3s. All the mp3s are catalogued by id tags, not any filename or directory structure you've copied across. This has the slight annoyance in that pod casts don't quite fit into any of the artist\album\song categories, making it awkward to find your pod casts. I would also note that you cant delete these mp3s from the e250, you have to be connected to the computer to do that.

I haven't tried the software that comes on a CD as I'm using windows 2000, and I don't think its compatible (It requires Windows XP sp1)

I've tried the recording feature, which records to wav files that are named with a date timestamp. You can delete these files. If you cannot put mp3 files in the recordings directory they will not be recognised as recordings. I was impressed with the tiny built in microphones ability to pick up conversation, which is just as well as there is no option of fitting an external microphone.

All in all though it's a good, well build, quality bit of kit for a very reasonable price. It'll do me until they start making 10Gb flash mp3 players with built in Wireless Internet access, until then buy the e250.

When i opened the box and first saw the Sansa e250, i noticed how small it looked compared to the pictures on Amazon.co.uk - think Ipod Nano but slightly thicker. This makes it much easier to hold than a nano. The titanium backing is very hard-wearing and it looks great - more interesting than the now common ipod. Ignore what other people have said about the volume being too low unless you have hearing problems. I usually have it on three-quarter volume and it's good. One thing though, i will probably be replacing the standard earphones as the sound quality is good but not very special and they can be a little less than comfortable after long-periods if not in correct position. Another £10-£15 on earphones will sort this. If you want a radio, this is not the one to buy as it doesn't work here in the UK. The large screen is much better than the ipod nano's, which is dwarfed after looking at the Sansa. All the buttons and scroll wheel work in the same way as you'd expect. The 3 biggest advantages are the price (£59.99 compared to £90 for the 2gb nano), the simplicity of transferring tracks from the PC to the Sansa (drag and drop or sync with Windows Media Player 10) and the expandable memory (i'm just going to fill it and then buy a MICRO SD card when i need it). As long as the songs already have their names attached on the PC they will show up on the player. Great product.