Almost a year ago, my son bought a Sansa e260 digital media player. To be honest, he never really liked the player, plagued as it was with glitches and issues getting his music to play. One day while out and about, he dropped, and cracked the screen. Fortunately, he had bought a replacement plan at Best Buy, and they allowed him to pay the difference to upgrade to the Sandisk Sansa 16GB View.

Basics

Look and Feel
The View 16 GB, being a flash card based player, is slimmer and lighter than the hard drive based players on the market. About the size of a cell phone, the View is only about a half inch thick. We have to admit it looks stylish and sleek, and has a nicely balanced feel in the palm of the hand. We liked the look as soon as we got it out of the box.

Navigating and Controls
Turning the player on is done by pushing up a small slide switch on the left hand side; pressing it down will engage a hold/lock function to keep you from changing songs, volume, etc. while in use. On the right side of the View you’ll find a Micro SD expansion slot that will let you add even more memory if you need it.

The Sansa View uses a click wheel navigation system, much like the ipod. Scrolling on any given screen is done by turning the wheel left or right; pressing a button in the center of the device selects your option. A “home key” at the upper right hand corner of the player brings you back to the main menu at any time (it even has a little house icon that lights up next to it). Which, when you think of it, is so much easier than clicking the heels on your ruby red slippers and repeating, “There’s no place like home.”

Fill ‘er Up, Please

The first thing you’ll need to do, of course, is to add music, pictures, and videos to your player, and that’s done easily enough through Windows Media Player. Most picture formats, MP3, WAV, and WMA audio files, and MPEG-4 and WMV movies are compatible; ipod owners beware, your itunes tracks need not apply.

Adding files to the player is a snap, and as easy as dragging and dropping songs to your sync list and then syncing the files with your player. If you have a library smaller than 16GB and want to put it all on your player, Windows Media Player can automatically sync it all, as well as anything new you download or rip. Transfer time seemed slightly slower than we’ve experienced with ipod ipod or Zune . Loading 2.5 GB of files took about 15 minutes through the USB 2.0 connection, which also charges the battery.

Ditch the Headphones
Although the supplied headphones sound decent, they don’t sound great. To better appreciate the sound potential of the Sansa View, I recommend investing in a good pair of phones. They don’t have to cost a lot, and I’ve enjoyed excellent value and results from the Philips HE-592s ($15-$20) or the SHE-9500s ($35-$40). The latter were used to test the Sansa View.

We’re Ready to Play
Powering up the device brought us to a familiar home screen, mostly because it’s just like the one we used for the old e260. Turning the scroll wheel toggles through your options:

Music: Oddly enough, this brought us to our music, or more correctly, a menu that allows you to select your music. You can opt to Play All, see recently added tracks, sort by artist, album, a list of all songs, genre, your own top rated songs, pull up playlists, podcasts, audio books, or voice recordings.

Videos:
Sorts your movies by A-Z, top rated, or bookmarks you can save on certain movies.

Photos:
You can see your pics by file name, thumbnails, galleries you’ve created, or your own “Go List”.

More:
Allows access to the FM-Tuner, voice recorder (a microphone is built in), and system settings which are generally better used through the particular area you happen to be using (as in music settings from within an audio track, for example).

Now Playing:
Should be self explanatory, but brings you back to the track/video/pic you’re playing from the main menu.

Playing a Track
Although we sometimes play an entire album at a time, overall we generally prefer to scroll through our entire library. Scrolling up and down the list to our desired track, a simple press of the center button starts play, displaying the album cover and the time elapsed and remaining on the track. The album cover is displayed much smaller than we’d like, and we think that the name of the album and track as displayed could be better scrolled at the bottom. Instead of a lot of empty blue space, we want to see larger album art.

The scroll wheel doubles as a volume lever, and as soon as you turn it the progress bar is instantly placed by a volume indicator. Pressing the top of the wheel will pause play, while pressing the left and right sides will restart the track and/or scroll back and forward through your tracks.

Pressing the bottom of the wheel gives you your music options. We like the direct access to the equalizer, which allows you to quickly change the settings to suit the song you’re currently playing. You can also rate a song, set to repeat or shuffle, and add to a go list.

Curiously, you have to jump to this menu to get back to the song list, which we don’t like. But we do very much appreciate the ability to delete the current selection directly from this menu. Although you can do this from Windows Media Player too, it’s nice to be able to deleted on the fly, especially when you have long lists of files and want to immediately eliminate duplicates.

Video
The 2.4 inch display is roughly in line with other players in this price range, and provides a crisp, clear picture with the movies we’ve tried. Which is all the more reason to be annoyed by the small album art.

Battery Life
Is good, a full charge of average use gets us roughly ten hours of audio play, less if we're watching video and the display is constantly on.

Overall
We should mention that, overall, we really like the Sansa View. The sound is great, functionality easy to grasp and use, and transferring files a snap. In comparison, we find that seek time is faster with this flash based player than we’ve experienced with hard drive based players, and we don’t get the occasional delays seeking tracks and going back to the menu from them sometimes entail.

The main drawback here, then, is the price. At about $179, the Sansa View 16 GB player is only about $20 less than a 30GB ipod or Zune, and if you use your player a lot, you’ll want that extra space sooner or later.

Still, the Sansa View 16 GB digital player has a lot going for it, and if you prefer flash players to hard drive models, this may just be the one for you.



Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 179
Recommended for: Music Lovers - High Capacity Storage for an Entire Album Collection