Roti Canai

I bought a Sandisk Sansa Review on the last PC fair in KLCC. It was because I was already dreaming having 1 mp3 player for a long time, mainly because I always take bus to go to school, and waiting is just frustrating. With a mp3 player, I can kill time and not be so pissed off why the bus haven't come.

Back to the point, I surveyed a few mp3 player on the net, and from friends. They all agreed that Creative and Sony are 2 trusted brand, but Sony is damn expensive. Creative Zen Stone gets a lot of good comments online and was voted really good. I was preparing to buy that too, but went with this Sansa mostly because of the price tag. Sansa Express 2GB free 1GB micro sd card only costs RM189, while Creative Zen Stone Plus 2GB costs RM199. Less 1 GB but RM10 more expensive.

Design
The design of the Sansa is nice, but I am confuse why they design a little bulge on behind. the four way navigational pad is easy to understand and one does not have to read the manual to operate it. The cap is tight and is nicely placed.Other player should learn from them because I see a lot of players with loose cap and they just lose it. The lanyard can be connected to the cap part. I wish the lanyard was attached to the body so it won't be so easily snatched. You can insert the micro-sized micro sd(really small) just below the 3.5mm port. It doesn't have a cap to secure the card so I was scared that the card will fall out easily, I didn't even dare to use it until now. The front part of it is a finger magnet, but once you wipe it, it works really well as a mirror! Thats what I call nice! The volume button is located at the lower side of it, and I wonder why they don't integrate the menu button that is on top of the player to the middle of the navigational pad. It would save some space and easier too. There is also a hold button on top but it looks cheap and plastic-ky.

Screen
The four-line bright OLED screen of the SanDisk Sansa Express MP3 player is displaying two colours; orange for the battery indicator and green for all the other items. It displays the singer, the title and the album when you play a song. It doesn't have a picture renderer so no album arts for me. And I don't need one too. You can read the screen quite clear when indoors with good lighting. It also works as a light in dark and even easier reading those lines in dark. Only problem is when you are under bright sunlight, and reading is hard. But you can always shade it with your hand and then you can just read it like normal.

User Interface
The user interface is quite user friendly. Each time you power up,it will update its database(usually takes about 5 seconds), then it shows a dog(yes, it is a dog) eating the "Sandisk" word. Then it plays back what you have left back when you close down. The first time it will let you choose language, which consists of more than 20 languages! Thats what I call user friendly. Probably they aim to sell worldwide. I heard that the newest firmware even have egypt language and a bunch more. First, you get to choose from "Music" for song playbacks, "FM Radio" to listen to radio, "Audio" to record voice, then "Settings" for all kinds of settings. You can choose to play from a specific album, artist, playlist, genre or whole collection. There is also a on the go playlist called Go List which you can add any song when you play them. Easy to learn, easy to navigate. You can also make your own playlist but only on the computer. You can auto search for station too in the FM Radio and set the time to record. Audio recording is easy. Equalizer consists of five choices or you can customize it. On the Settings option, you can change the sleep time, the language, display brightness, reset all, format, see system info and a lot more. The system info shows the number of songs,space and firmware version. The menu button on top lets you switch between different kind of menus without pausing the song. Nice.

Features
The main reason I fall in love with this player is because it's features rich. First of it, it can listen to FM radio, which is great because not everytime I want to listen to music. Then, I can record FM! How often do you see a player that does that? Also, the result is quite good. Next, it has sound recording. Not big deal, but having it is just nice.Micro SD slot is the best, when you can upgrade the storage space with only RM20 for a 2GB card. You can also adjust the brightness of the screen, also you have 2 kinds of volumes to choose from, loud and normal to suit different kind of people. You can also format the whole player or the card with it too. The favourite function is the sleep mode, which I use very often. It will automatically turn off when you set it your desired time with sleep mode. However, the downside is I always forgot to turn off sleep mode and it shuts down automatically. It also has a lousy shuffle function because it doesn't shuffle the songs quite well. All radio and voice recordings can be listened to via the 'Music' menu as well. Users comment on the net says that it hangs quite often but I did not encounter such experience except one. A hard reset button is enough to recover everything and it just looks new again. No bad things happen to me although many encoutered such experience. Well, hard reset was good enough. File format support is not comparable with other brands of player but enough for me. MP3, WMA and protected WMA. audio books too.

Battery
Battery life was rated 15 hours on their website. It lasted quite a while but I didn't calculate it. I am sure it is sure to that number because with light use, I can listen for a week without charging. Charging is through the USB port, but you can always buy a adapter because normal ones will do just fine. It charges for about 3 hours and shows a "charged" sign. You can't change the internal battery, but I think it will last a long time and by that time, you have more advanced player to choose from.

Transferring Media
The internal memory of 2GB is actually really enough for my song collection. Transferring is done really simple, drag and drop is easy, Or you can sync it with Windows Media Player 11. Its fun to see the nice little icon in My Computer when you plug it in. It also lets you choose between internal memory or external memory. Playlist can be made inside and you can drop the songs you like into it. Transferring is quite fast, a whole album only takes up my 20 seconds. The best part is you can use it as a portable memory device. Just drag the files you want into it and you can store it inside, although the player cannot play it. I use it like a pendrive and a micro sd reader.



Audio
The sound quality can be considered quite good. I've listened to it before I buy because I don't want to buy some cheap player with robot sound in it. I've compared with Creative and it doesn't have much difference. But maybe because of earphone, the expensive Philips player sounds better. You can't ask for everything but the sound is super clear and the bass is just normal. Nice for my ears and my wallet. The recording is considered really clear as I can hear what my officer say in the recording. Considering the price tag, it is a best buy. Maybe an earphone upgrade will make a big difference because I heard that earphones plays big part in sound quality.

Accessories
The included accessories are lanyard, earphone, a really short USB extension and some stickers. Those stickers stay in the box whilt the lanyard is in good use and can act as a fashion accessories. The earphone is comfortable and fits quite well in my ears. But it doesn't block out sound and I need to tune up the volume when it is noisy outside.


Verdict
As a budget MP3 player, Sansa Express did a great job with nice design, user friendly interface, multi function and budget wise, not to forget with a micro sd slot. People tend to look down on other brands of MP3 player that aren't that well known.Sandisk did quite a good job. This is definitely a Ipod killer and Zen Stone killer if they could just upgrade the firmware to a more stable version. The build feels tough enough and the front part that acts as a mirror also gives advantage. They can work on the firmware and the audio quality to make it the best player in town. Overall, I give it a 8 over 10 because of the unstable firmware and lack of cap for the micro sd slot.

wuwu.... lost edi lo....