The Sandisk Sansa C250 - $100 Buys Quite a Nice MP3 Player

While Apple is by far the number one supplier of mp3 players, Sandisk runs second in the flash memory player market, garnering at least 15% of sales according to recent reports. After entering the market about 2 years ago, Sandisk has taken advantage of their flash memory expertise by putting together a strong lineup of feature rich, reasonably priced players that offer an excellent combination of performance and features. While many shoppers won’t look past the iPod models, the current Sandisk models are getting consideration from many tech savy shoppers looking for the best value for their dollar.

SanDisk’s latest models, the Sansa C200 Series MP3 players, are a perfect example of what Sandisk brings to the mp3 player market. The flash memory based c200 models are available in 1gb (C240) and 2gb (C250) versions, with aggressive list prices of $80 and $100, respectively. While the 1gb version matches the latest iPod 1 gb shuffle in price, it adds a color display, FM tuner, voice recorder, a micro SD card expansion slot, a removeable/user replaceable Li battery rated at 15 hours, support for music subscription services, and photo viewing, and a nice mix of features at this price point. Unfortunately, the quality of the color display is mediocre; limiting its usefulness for viewing photo’s, and the sound quality is average, especially if you stick with the included earbuds. However, after reviewing the market, I recently purchased the C250 version as a gift for a family member, and wasn't disappointed.

In the Box

The Sansa C250 comes with a lanyard, proprietary USB charging/transfer cable, earbuds, software cd, and quickstart guide. The need for a proprietary cable is a little annoying, as you’re locked into using the cable that comes with this unit rather than any mini USB cable, making it another piece to get lost when you travel.

A full manual is included on the cd. No slip case is included, and the 530mah lithium ion battery comes installed in the C250. Spare batteries list for a reasonable $20.

Setup

The Sansa C250 is packaged in a user-unfriendly blister package. Fortunately, the most difficult part of the setup process is getting it out of the package. Plugging USB cable into the C250 and your Windows XP PC puts the C250 into charging mode, and causes the C250 show up in Windows Explorer.

Once connected, you can just “drag and drop” tunes from explorer to the c250. If you are transferring tunes that licensed, i.e., either purchased or subscribed to from Napster, Yahoo Music, Rhapsody or one of the other download sites, you may need to confirm the player is in its default “MTP” (Media Transfer Protocol) mode. Like many portable players, the Sansa C250 offers two transfer/storage modes.

In MTP mode, the C250 shows up as another device (Sansa C250) in Windows Explorer, without a drive letter. If it is in MSC (Mass Storage Class) mode, the c250 will show up in explorer with a drive letter. You made need MSC mode if you don’t have the latest version of media player on your PC, or if you are updating the C250’s firmware. Since I use Yahoo Music’s subscription service, we keep the player in MTP mode.

After charging and transferring a few tunes, you’re ready to start listening.

Using the C250 to Listen to Music

We subscribe to Yahoo Music, and use their software to manage music on the player. The Yahoo Music software recognizes the player quickly, and it is easy to transfer music to the player using the software. (Keeping the licenses up to date seems to be ongoing problem though, Yahoo Music’s library isn’t as stable as I’d like, and songs seem to drop from Yahoo’s music library for no reason. That’s a Yahoo Music problem, and would affect any player) Transferring your own or subscription content with Windows Explorer works well also.

The earbuds included with the C250 are average, bass is adequate, highs seem very slightly muffled to me. They are not quite as good as the ones Creative or iPod include with their players, but still better than a $5 set you might buy at Wal-Mart. They fit reasonably well, and are probably appropriate for a $100 mp3 player. At full volume, they are very loud and will be able to drown out any background noise.

Most listeners will find the sound quality of c250 to be adequate or better, there’s no background hiss, frequency response sounds good (basses, mid ranges, highs all sound ok to me). Overall the quality seems a slight step behind Creative and Apple players I’ve used, the music doesn’t seem quite as bright or full, but the difference is small, and should not affect casual listening at all.

The controls are laid out well, and easy to find by touch, all located where they won’t likely be hit by mistake. There’s a volume rocker on one side of the player, and a hold switch and record button on the other. On the face is a single select button surrounded by a square d-pad type switch for navigating menus and making adjustments to the settings. One corner of this d-pad is left open, leaving room for the small on off button. The menus are intuitive, and most of the basic stuff you’d expect is there, several preset and custom equalizer options, and playlist support.

Photo Viewing

The C250 comes with a software package, Sandisk Media Converter, for converting and transferring images to the mp3 player. The software works, converting images to files about 120 X 80 resolution, 6-8kb in size. You have very little control over what the converter does. The C250’s display is small (1.4” X 0.7”), low resolution, the contrast is not good, and the view angles are poor...... all of which makes photo viewing a disappointment. Even the best images look a little blurry.

FM

The FM radio works pretty well. The auto search found 15 stations for us and added them to the presets. You can cycle through the presets by pushing the select button on the C250, or you can manually step through the frequencies to find stations.

Recording

The C250 has a small microphone for making voice recordings. Audio files are saved as mono wav files, requiring about 1mb space per minute. The microphone picks up any movements by your fingers on the player as loud noises, making it difficult to get decent recordings noise free voice recordings. The quality of the recordings is good enough to understand speakers easily, if they are speaking within a few feet of the microphone. The C250 will also record FM, in stereo. FM recorders take up a little over 3mb space per minute, and sound a little better than voice recordings. The FM recording quality is not quite as good as the original FM; the music isn’t as bright, less highs and lows. Both voice and FM recordings can be transferred from the C250 to your PC.

Conclusion

Compared to an iPod, the C250 seems featured packed, though among its non-iPod competitors, its feature set is average. Creative models offer more playlist options, for example, and other models have a better display. But anyone looking for the best mp3 player under $100 should consider this model. Sandisk has optimized the feature set for this $100 price point, providing a color display, 2gb memory, playsforsure support, voice recorder, FM, a micro sd slot for expansion, and a user replaceable Li ion battery. Overall, this is a good mp3 player, although the color display is disappointing. In the end, you won’t be disappointed by this recorder unless photo viewing is important.