SanDisk Sansa View (8GB)

Summary: I got mine about a week ago at circuit city They have an awesome deal, and they just lowered it even more than what I paid, IF you can find ...

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Summary: I got mine about a week ago at circuit city They have an awesome deal, and they just lowered it even more than what I paid, IF you can find it in stock. Newegg oddly doesn't list this item yet, normally they are my favorite.

First off I'd like to talk about the issue raised by cnet about bass response. At default settings, it does seem to drop off at the low end. If you ran it with flat EQ, it would sound just about perfect if you ran it through a car stereo which had a 'loud' button to shift things towards the bass end a tad. However, the EQ is quite responsive and allows for some serious adjustment. The presets (classical, etc.) are very poor in my opinion, so if you really like to use pre-made eq settings you'll be disappointed. And cnet is correct that if you raise the bass bar on the custom EQ by a lot, it does run into some distortion. However, this is true of any audio product which is being pushed for more bass than its amplifier can give.

Many people however, forget that only raising the EQ bars above the baseline increases the sound output at a given volume setting. And the sansa's EQ is extremely sensitive & responsive. Its very easy to overdo it. To improve sound quality without elevating the sound output above designed maximums, the bars should be moved both above and below the baseline, in roughly equal amounts. I have mine set at about 1/4 up from flat in bass & treble, default in mid-bass & mid-treble, and 1/3 of the way *down* in midtone. It sounds very good with no distortion.

Also, I have some mp3's which are badly encoded and have horrible sounding treble normally, but they sound surprisingly good on this player. End result, the sansa can make great sound, but it does take some tweaking to get it just right. I would agree that good bass response shouldn't be tucked away with tweaked settings at the limit of the player's ability though. It may have something to do with how it interprets the mp3's, since I have a few mp3's which have awesome sounding deep bass at flat EQ settings. Which suggests the hardware isn't at fault. I didn't update the firmware yet since its just released. I think a well designed firmware adjustment by sansa could make good bass something you don't have to tweak to get.


Syncing in WMP10 is a breeze. I haven't figured out how to simply drag&drop songs onto it yet, it doesn't seem to recognize as a usb mass storage device (my old mp3 player did, which kinda obsoleted usb flashdrives for me).


Menu's... The uppermost menu is nice, works well, and is fun to use. But all the submenus are rather plain. This alone is no big deal, it has a LOT of features in the menus, and its a media player, not a menu showcase. I did however find some of the menus a little counterintuitive to navigate during playback. Its just a matter of time before learning them inside out, but its nice when a device has a more naturally intuitive layout. It would be really neat if someone would code a new skin for the menu system for this thing. But it works fine.


Battery life... being used to using the cdplayer in my car since my old mp3 player died, i forgot to disconnect my sansa and take it inside the other day. 24 hours later when I left for work, it was still playing. Given that it got below freezing for most of the night, I'm really impressed with the battery life. It even continued to play through that work day, and it still had a bit of battery life left on the battery display when i took it home and finally plugged it in. in other words 'wow'.


The screen looks great. I don't notice any problems or lacking quality at all. It seems bright, great resolution, and has vibrant colors. And its 'big'. 2.4" is a pretty big screen compared to the size of the player. It is flush with the player facing, which looks very sleek, but I'd have preferred it to be recessed about 1mm to avoid scratches. The facing material does seem to be pretty scratch resistant though.


This is the largest flash-memory mp3 player i've seen. So it you want something you can clip to your nose ring and forget about, this isn't it. on the other hand, if you're looking for a portable video player, this is 'tiny'. It's still a bit smaller than most hard drive based mp3 players. While really small players do have a 'wow cool' factor, I don't really see this player as being too bulky to carry around (unless you're in a bikini and have a drink in both hands). Its about the same overall bulk as my cell phone (LG 8300, great phone by the way) but taller and flatter. its quite pocket-able, and light enough to put on an armband or some other jogging friendly spot.


The casing is slightly separated near the on/off switch. Its so slight that I would not have noticed it if I had not read a review which complained of this on another site. It doesn't have any effect on functionality and it doesn't make it feel at all lacking in durability. But I do plan on putting a little superglue on the corner of a 3x5 card and slipping that through the seam gap, then hold it tight with a padded c-clamp for about 10 min. It may be no concern, but I just don't want dust or lint getting in at all. Really I'm being quite perfectionistic about this.


The wheel feels great, works great, is great. Its pretty too, I love the blue glow ring around it. This is the wheel which the old e200 series should have been born with. The center button is small, but I haven't missed it yet. I have rather large hands, and manicured nails, so I'm not sure why anyone would have a problem using the center button. I have increased the amount of time that the controls stay illuminated. I use it in the dark a lot, so I'll leave it at least until I get to know the feel of the player more. Actually with the battery life, I'll probably just leave set longer it indefinitely.


The voice recorder is basic. Sound quality is not stellar, its about like any other pocket voice recorder. Its a neat little 'extra' that most other players don't have.


FM player is pretty good actually. Better than you'd expect without an external antenna. Lots of presets, etc.


Flash memory... For those of you who've never had a hard drive based mp3 player while jogging or driving a sports car over rough roads, you probably don't appreciate how nice flash memory is. Flash memory has no moving parts, uses very little electricity, doesn't have drive spin-up delays, and most importantly, has flawless playback even when you're shaking it. Also, hard drives in portable players tend not to hold up in the long run. Sure they may be rated to survive a drop from the moon without breaking, but the bearings do not survive routine shaking in the long run. Mine has 8Gb of memory, and a slot which can take up to another 8Gb of memory. My music collection is currently about 8Gb (the good songs anyway), so this is the perfect size right now. And as I add to my collection, it will be easy to upgrade and keep my whole music 'favorites' collection on my mp3 player.


In an ideal world, the menus would be really cool 3-D graphics all the way to the bottom layer, it would have a better sealed seam, bass response a bit better at flat EQ, and the EQ presets would be nicer. But in an ideal world it would also weigh nothing, cost nothing, and make me pancakes in the morning.

Its a really nice player. I also liked and gave some serious thought to the Zune, and the Nano. But I kept coming back to this one. It's nice enough to get sentimentally attached to it I think

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