Sandisk Sansa® ExpressTM MP3 Player 2GB

• It provides you with everything you need to play your favorite music, enjoy your best photos, and listen to your preferred FM radio stations
• Able to play MP3, WMA, WAV, and protected WMA DRM music files, and supports JPEG, TIFF, PNG, BMP, and GIF as import media types
• Screen can exhibit up to 64,000 colors, lets you choose to display album cover art for the current song via ID3 tag support or photo thumbnails
• 2 gigabytes of built-in flash memory allows you to store up to 1,000 songs, MicroSD cards effectively expands your memory capacity infinitely
• Comes in a stylish black, with earphones, a USB cable, and a rechargeable and removable lithium-ion battery

I did quite a bit of research to get this one. and here are the reasons, I arrived at this decision:

Pro:

Size: It is pretty small yet not hard to use the controls

FM Radio: That's pretty nice in such a small MP3 player. Top that iPod

Expansion slot: The micro SD card makes this player future proof. Have more music to upload? get a card and you are done. iPod doesn't have it.

Voice recorder: was not on my wish list, but nice to have.

changable battery: battery goes bad, you can change it. iPod can't do this.

If you hit a button by accident while listening to the music, the button just wakes up the device then you can tell it what to do. Small feature but saves a LOT of annoying moments.

Sound is pretty good, unlike some reviews I have read. It is pretty much in par with other MP3 players especially iPod which is the benchmark these days.

Price: half of iPod Nano.

Con:

The package only comes with a USB charger. I have seen some plugs that have a USB output, or you can get their optional AC adapter.

Memory slot although nice, but there is no dummy card in it to avoid things getting stuck in it, so I just put a cheapy micro SD to fill the hole.

The screen could use some more contrast or better color scheme to display the menu better. You get used to it right away, but I am being super crtitcal here.

Buy Sandisk Sansa® ExpressTM MP3 Player 2GB Now

My 3 year old 512k Sandisk developed a lose earplug mount so it was to upgrade. The store I went to was offering the C250 model for the same price as the C240 model so I bought it.

The new unit is nice. The sound is better than my older model and the 64k color display is decent. You can view photos on it if you wish. It has a rechargeable lithium polymer battery which is a minus as they wear out over time, Sandisk makes up for this a bit by making the battery replaceable (although the kid at the Be-st buy store was wrong when he said it wasn't--maybe he was just trying to sell an extended warranty plan--bah). Still, I miss the flexibility my older player had with its AAA battery and the older one had a very similar battery life as my new one.

It has a passable FM tuner with decent reception. It won't work as well as a home receiver but it works okay. Sadly, Sandisk still does not sell a player with AM capability, another minus.

The unit has shuffle play but not random play. (By definition, shuffle play will potentially repeat a song already played, while random play will not). This is an OS weakness that would be easy to implement in the OS code, but most manufacturers don't bother.

Sandisk no longer uses a true FAT32 file system so their newer players have lost an enormous amount of flexibility compared to the older units. Now, I can only play music by "Artist", "Genre", "Song", and "Album". You no longer can pick a folder of music to play so you are limited by the predefined categories.

My old unit allowed the ability to play dance with pop by putting them in the same folder and simply playing from it. With the new unit that would be impossible without messing with the ID tags because now I can only select dance or pop but not both at the same time. It is "all" music or "one" genre, but not "some" genres. Clearly a big weakness.

From what I can tell, the unit uses the contents of the ID1 tags, so you need to have them properly populated. It does use playlists but I tend to not use them. I read that this unit only supports 1 playlist but I have yet to confirm that. If it allows multiple playlists then I could mix dance and pop but it would be pain to create a playlist for that.

In addition, the OS has been greatly dumbed down. You no longer can select the playback, display, or search speeds. You can no longer change the display orientation from right-handed to left-handed. You can no longer set left or right balance. You can no longer delete files from the device unless you are connected to a PC. The display no longer shows how much time is left on a song as it now only displays elapsed time, and you can no longer display what file name.

It is unfortunate that the newer units have been dumbed down as they have lost a number of very useful capabilities. Still, I like the new unit overall and I will adjust to the differences. It's a good unit for the money and the Sandisk quality is still there--my last one lasted 3 years under heavy use (3-6 hours a day) so I can't complain. If this will be your first MP3 player you probably won't be disappointed.

Read Best Reviews of Sandisk Sansa® ExpressTM MP3 Player 2GB Here

The contrast level on the display is so low no matter how one adjusts the brightness and backlight that you will have a hard time seeing what feature/song you are selecting. Its genuinely bizarre that they used a very light-blue field against a white backround. Text is black so at least you can see that clearly. Other than that, the sound is good for such a cheap player and it has a built-in equalizer to adjust the sound to your own liking. It will operate in MSC mode, which simply means that you can load music files into the player directly from the My Computer icon. No software of any sort needed at all to load songs into the player. You lose the ability to make playlists in MSC mode but personally I prefer the speed and simplicity of MSC mode. You cannot use MSC mode to play digitally-protected music. Again not an issue for me. If you are looking for a cheap mp3 player, this is worth considering.

Want Sandisk Sansa® ExpressTM MP3 Player 2GB Discount?

OK. I've seen some of the other reviews for this product, and a few people have mentioned problems with the backlighting and contrast, but I don't have that problem. I have now owned my player three weeks, and I LOVE IT!

This player has incredibly simple menus to follow, the display is adequate for most people who will only use this to listen to music. I've had no problems with the display which does a fairly good job with the photos I've loaded onto it. The song text is in black against a light blue field which makes it easy to see at all times.

Straight out of the box, my Windows XP systems instantly recognized the device and installed the appropriate drivers. I did have a problem (at first) with getting my laptop (running Vista Home Basic) to recognize the device, but I realized that this was due to the fact that I had the player set in the wrong USB mode (it needs to be in MSC mode for Vista to recognize the device) Once I changed the mode to MSC (through the player's settings menu), all of my systems recognize it every time without a single problem.

I like the fact that you can change the battery in the player quickly and easily, unlike an Ipod, and that it has an expandable Micro SD slot, which the manufacturer says you can only upgrade by 1 GB. If you buy this, go ahead and spring for the Micro SD card so that you prevent dust and dirt from getting into the slot; you'll also expand the room you have available on the player. I just received my $20.00, 2GB (that's right 2 GB) expansion card from NewEgg.com today, and again, I popped it into my player, which connects to desktop/laptops through a provided USB cable, and it was instantly recognized by my work system as a separate drive.

Other reasons to like this player is the fact that it features a voice recorder, an FM tuner, an adjustable equalizer with presets (I set mine with a custom setting which sounds better than the presets)and it lets you record FM radio. Try THAT with an Ipod... Did I mention that it will let you plays songs downloaded from the most popular services (another thing Ipod can't do), in addition to .wmv and mp3 files?

A couple of people in other reviews have mentioned investing in a new pair of earbuds, which I would agree with if you're a serious audiophile, but again, for most people, the earbuds it ships with should more than fit the bill.

The only thing this player really lacks is the storage capacity that some other players on the market have. That's ok though, because at bit rate of 128 kbps per song, you can fit up to 1,000 songs. I doubled my 2 GB capacity with the Micro SD card, giving the player a total capacity of 4 GB. Since I use only high bit rate (160 kbps and better) audio, and I have about 450 songs with plenty of room left over for my work files and photos.

If you're looking for an economical, sturdy mp3 player this is the one. The price makes this a great gift for any occasion year-round, and for the money, you're not going to find a better value anywhere else on the market.

I was hesitant about buying an MP3 player because I am relatively inept when it comes to electronic devices. After researching different MP3 players I decided to take a chance on the SanDisk because of its reasonable price plus I had read that it was compatible with Windows Media Player (WMP). I had downloaded dozens of CDs onto the WMP and now needed something small and pocket sized that was inconspicuous to use at work. My profession affords me with occasional down time so I wanted a small MP3 player with ear plugs that would help me pass the time by dusting off a few musical neural networks encoded in the 60's. First of all I was surprised at how simple transferring songs was using the WMP and the Sandisk. You first open up the WMP and once the computer recognizes the "device" you click on the icon, which allows the WMP to connect with the SanDisk. Then you can either right click on selected songs and select "add to synch" or you can right click on the CD title and add the entire contents of the CD to the sync list. The WMP shows you how much room you have left on the Sandisk after each input. Pretty simple. The real surprise occurred when I placed the ear plugs in and listened to my old archaic music. I'm not crazy about ear plugs (can't use headphones at work), but the ones that come with the player are not uncomfortable. The sound quality of the SanDisk is extremely impressive for such a small device. Although the player comes with an equalizer I did not even find it necessary to adjust the sounds. I give this product 5 stars for the musical portion of the SanDisk. I cannot comment on the other options that this product has, but I am obviously impressed enough to leave a review on this item. I should mention that the device comes with a CD that I downloaded and it appears to assist in using the other features of the SanDisk MP3 player, but as mentioned I bought the player solely for listening to music and am simply commenting on the musical portion of the SanDisk Sansa c250 MP3 player. I hope that this helps you in deciding which player to buy. I am very satisfied with this product.