rbinck's Full Review: SanDisk Sansa m240 (1 GB) MP3 Player
Introduction
My wife is visually impaired and the State Of Texas Library for the Blind sent her an invite to participate in a new program of the Talking Books program that would allow audio books to be downloaded. The only thing was it either required her listening to the books on the computer or we needed to get one of their recommended players. The SanDisk m240 was one of them.
What You Get
Included with the m240 player is a very short (6”) USB cable to connect to your computer for loading the material. This is fine for a laptop computer or for computers that have a front mounted USB port, but for those computers with rear accessible USB ports an extension USB cable may be required.
Also included with the package I received was a trial membership to Napster and some free book downloads. Because the purpose I had for the player was what it was, I didn’t avail myself of either of these services so I don’t have any comment on those. I’m sure they would be a great starter service for someone wanting to download music or books.
Finally there are the earbuds. My wife uses them, but the unit is capable of operating with some headphones as well if you don’t like having something jammed in your ears. Depending on the connector size on your headphones you may need an adapter.
Description
The thing that is most impressive about this player is its size. At approx 1” x 1.5” x 3” and weighing in at under 2 ounces, it can be placed just about anywhere and not noticed at all. Wristband, pocket, or even clipped to your hat it almost disappears.
Operation
The m240 uses a single AAA battery and the battery can either be a standard alkaline or the rechargeable type. We use the rechargeable type batteries by rotating them through a charger that accommodates up to 4 batteries. Once the battery is installed the player is ready for use. I find each rechargeable battery will last about 10 hours and with the alkaline battery the life is between 14 and 15 hours. My wife is an avid reader, so the rechargeable batteries are a must.
The controls on the m240 are very simple to use. They are a combination of buttons on the side and touch membrane type buttons on the face of the unit. There is a very small LCD screen that is used to navigate the menus and make particular selections. That took a bit of training for my wife because she had to commit each operation required to memory. Fortunately people with visual impairments memorize sequences like this quickly and the menu operations to get books started require a surprisingly few button presses. She took to it right away!
There are menu operations that will allow some pretty slick searching for songs by Artist, Albums, etc as well, but my wife does not use them. For those who build music libraries this could be a great feature.
In order to be able to use a portable player with the books downloaded from the State it is required for the player to be compatible with the DRM (Digital Rights Management) protection scheme. I know there are ways around this, but with the m240 being so inexpensive I say why bother? The nice thing about this player is once the books, or music files, are transferred to the player the 14 day check out limit is extended indefinitely.
When the m240 is plugged into the USB port on your Windows 2000, XP or Vista computer it will be recognized as a removable drive right away. If you are using Windows 98SE or earlier, you will need to get a driver from SanDisk.
There are several ways to load music or books on the m240. I use the Overdrive software that is supplied by the State Library because it handles the downloading as well as the transfer to the m240. But you can also use MusicMatch Jukebox software or the Windows Media Player software as well. You can even treat the m240 as another drive on your system and copy mp3 or wma files directly to the m240. This is handy for erasing the entire m240 for a new load.
Once loaded the memory is retained in the m240 until erased by you. Removing the battery will not cause the m240 to loose its memory, which is important if you put more material on the m240 than a single battery can play. Another thing about the m240 memory is if you don’t use all of the capacity of the m240 for music, it can also be used as a backup drive because it will act like any other flash drive. I don’t recommend this as a constant use thing, but on occasion I have used it to transfer data files from my home computer to my work computer without having to burn a CD. The m240 actually holds twice as much as a CD, by the way.
Capacity
The capacity in terms of hours for the m240 will vary depending on the material. Books generally will consume less memory per minute than music because the narration does not have the extended range of music. Using rules of thumb is the m240 should be able to hold about 1,000 minutes of music and assuming about 3 minutes per song that will result in 333 songs. Each song length will vary though, so you could expect maybe as much as 100 fewer songs. Still, 1,000 minutes is over 16 hours!
The files for books can, and usually are, much smaller. I don’t know the exact number of books that can be loaded on the m240 because we have a 5 book limit from the state so 5 books is all that we have ever loaded at one time. Generally it is a lot more than 16 hours though.
Audio Quality
Using the m240 for books does not require much of a strain as far as audio quality goes, but just to test the m240 some I connected it to my sound system. I also connected it to some high quality headphones and in both cases, the audio quality was surprisingly good. It seems to be more a function of the quality of the headphones that are connected to the m240 rather than the m240 itself.
Conclusion
In researching the players before buying, I have heard of some m240 freezing and that bothered me somewhat, but so far I have had no problems with the m240 in this regard. It has performed flawlessly.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 40 Recommended for: Audio Book Listeners - Download Audio Books and Radio Programs
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