Sandisk Sansa Audio Player

SanDisk Sansa e140 MP3 player - 1 GB
 

by Rick Castellini
June 2005

SanDisk entered the MP3 market less than a year ago and has already taken moved to the #2 spot behind Apple. When considering a portable audio player (because you can listen to more than music), consumers NEED to look beyond the vaunted iPod. For shear ease of use and affordability SanDisk has produced some impressive new devices.

The Sansa e140 comes out of the box with enough memory to hold around 500 songs or nearly 35 hours of audio and has an FM tuner. Unlike the iPods and other hard drive based players, the Sansa uses durable flash memory to store your music or audio. Also unlike many MP3 players, the Sansa is powered by a single AAA battery. SanDisk really thought about the usability and portability of the device when designing the Sansa. If you run out of battery, you don't have to plug it into a wall, just walk into any corner market, gas station, or super market to purchase your power. Perfect for traveling.

Transferring music is a breeze. You can drag and drop songs directly onto the 'removable disk' drive it creates in your My Computer folder or use Windows Media Player's Rip and Sync feature in Media Player 10. And transfers are fast with USB 2.0 ports. As mentioned, the e140 comes with 1GB of storage. SanDisk also released an e130 version with 512mb of internal storage. Both are upgradeable with SD cards giving this little player unlimited ability for expansion.

Music sounds fine (although admittedly, I am no audiophile) with included headphones, although not everyone may like the 'in-ear' phones included. And certainly more discriminating ears than mine will want a little richer sound from a portable player.

The Sansa also automatically organizes your music by artist, genre, year, or album (provided all MP3 tags are included in the file) and even recognizes audio books. So navigating to a song on the small but backlit screen is quite intuitive. I personally like to have the player shuffle my music so it plays in random orders.

This diminutive players is about the size of a business card and just a shade thicker than the AAA battery that powers it while weighing in at a svelte 1.8 ounces!

I was ever so close to giving this player our "5 Mics Up" award, but I rated it a solid 4.5 mics only because I think the sound could be better and although the included music organization is great, support for play lists would be a welcome addition.

Castellini on Computers Rating (1-5 mics)
Recommended Market:	Anyone from age 8-108
Approximate cost:	$140
Company and Web Site:	SanDisk