My SanDisk Sansa View Review
The SanDisk Sansa View was originally showcased at the 2007 CES, however it looked a lot different then the one released to retailers on October 1, 2007. The original View was shelved for about three months, then reintroduced on September 10, 2007 with it’s new, sleeker look. While researching and eventually deciding on a new portable media player, there were a few criteria that were important to me. Screen size, expandability, an included FM-Tuner, and most importantly, bang for the buck.
The Sansa View hit all of my criteria and more, but could it hit on all cylinders when it comes to functionality and dependability? You’ll find out more about that further down in this review, but before we get down to the nitty gritty, lets find out more about the SanDisk Sansa View and all that it has to offer.
Features:
The View offers a nice 2.4″ (320×240) color TFT screen that takes up a good portion of the overall dimension of the player. It’s capable of playing multiple video formats, including MPEG-4, WMV and H.264. The downloadable Sansa Media Converter allows you to convert just about any video format to one of the supported formats, which also works for converting unsupported image formats (currently JPG is the only supported image format) for the Sansa View.
The SanDisk Sansa View uses flash memory as it’s storage device and capacities include 8GB, 16GB, and a new 32GB version. Also included for additional storage is a microSD expansion slot, which allows for up to 32GB of additional storage. This was a huge selling point for me, as the extra storage capabilities ensures my mp3 collection cant exceed the players storage any time soon.
As you would expect, the usual audio formats are supported. These include MP3, WMA (protected and unprotected), AAC (unprotected), WAV and Audible audio formats. Also rounding out the audio features are the included voice recorder and FM-Tuner. The FM-Tuner allows for up to 10 presets, with the View capable of recording from your favorite stations.
Finally, the SanDisk Sansa View boasts a rechargeable battery life of up to 35 hours of audio playback and up to 7 hours of video playback. These claims obviously come with an asterisk with optimal settings and usage being the caveat. The battery is non removable and not replaceable, making the life span of the player only as long as you can keep your battery alive, which can be years with proper usage and charging.
Usage:
Button layout on the View is simple and effective. A large scroll wheel glides you through the menus with a center button for making selections. This center button may be a problem for those with larger fingers, as it is rather small and could result in unintentional selections, however it should not pose a problem for most users. Above the wheel is a very useful “home” button, which will bring you directly to the main menu. On the left side of the player is a dual function power and hold button, as well as the internal microphone, used for the voice recorder.
[singlepic=878,128,96,,right]The hold button is a great feature which prevents unintentional button presses while listening to your music or watching videos. The power button slides upward and must be held for a few seconds to power down the unit. I found this button to be a little of an annoyance. If you do not press firmly enough or for long enough, it can take a few tries to power down. This annoyance is especially prevalent using most of the available Sansa View cases, as they can slightly obstruct this button which can compound the issue. It’s a minor blemish, but worth noting as it seems to happen to me frequently.
Four selections are immediately available from the Main Menu, they are, Videos, Music, Photos, and More. Videos, Music, and Photos brings you to the selected libraries with multiple options for how you want to view and play them. The More selection gives you access to the Voice Recorder, FM Tuner, Equalizer, and the available settings for the View. Moving through the selections is simple with the fluid movement of the scroll wheel and simple options available. Once you have selected to play an audio or video file, two more options will become available on the main menu, Now Playing and Last Played.
The included headphones plug in to the bottom of the Sansa View, as does the proprietary USB charger and PC connect cable. Some people may find the location of the headphone jack a little strange or annoying, however I think it’s a clever design decision. With the headphone jack at the bottom, you can slide the View in to your pocket without the jack obstructing the path. It also makes sense if you want to pull it from your pocket to view what is being played, as you will not have to turn the player around to see the text right side up. I use an armband attachment, and this also works well as I can have the player facing me without the cord being an obstruction.
As for those headphones, I was simply not impressed with the quality of the sound or the quality of the product as a whole. The included headphones give an OK sound, but seemed to lack good bass response, and also tended to fall out of my ears quite frequently. The ear-bud cushions fell off often as well, with me losing one within a few days of use as a direct result of this problem. Most will likely want to use a higher quality headphone set anyway, so I don’t mark the View down much for this.
Connecting the Sansa View to your PC’s USB port through the proprietary connection at the bottom of the unit allows for charging and synchronization with Windows Media Player or Rhapsody. This may not affect most users, but it must be noted that while connected to the PC, your View will not be usable for any other functionality. There are multiple accessories available which use that proprietary port, including an AC charger which does allow for music and video playback while charging, however that does not come standard with the View.
Results:
I’ve owned this SanDisk Sansa View model for about one month now, and having used it in real world conditions on a fairly regular bases, have formulated the following opinions and gripes. I’ll start with what I love about the View, then move on to some of the complaints I have.
The Good:
I love the look of the unit, I think it’s a nice slick design that’s just the right size for me. It’s not big and bulky like I feared the original version announced back at the 2007 CES was going to be, however it’s not so small that I’m squinting while looking at menu options and watching videos. It fits comfortably in my hand and moving around the menus with the scroll wheel and buttons seems effortless and natural, as I noted above. The screen is bright and resolution seems right. Although some may complain that the menus lack any real ingenuity or pizazz, especially with the graphics, I personally do not see these as being negatives. They are simple and to the point and that’s all that I need.
The battery life seems very good too. I left the player running on the “Play All” playlist with over 1500 songs in the queue, and the next day I came in with the player still going at it. I listened for a good portion of the work day before the unit finally shut down due to low battery. I’d say it was about 24 - 28hrs of continuous play. This is more then I’ll ever need in my everyday usage, so it’s more then acceptable to me.
The Bad:
One of the biggest complaints I have about the View is how difficult it seems to be to just setup a play list and play it. It’s difficult and really frustrating trying to create a “Music Go List” as you must play the song, or already be playing the song to add it to the list. I simply want to run through my Song List and add a few songs on the fly, without having to play them all first. Seems logical that this would be a standard feature, but I don’t see it available here. You must create your playlists using external programs, such as Windows Media Center or Rhapsody. This may be fine for some, but even those programs seem to produce their own problems. For instance, I cant seem to just create playlists from existing songs on my View, I have to use the MP3 library that is on my hdd, which always seem to also want to transfer to the player even though they already exist there. This can be quite frustrating.
My next complaint has to do with some functionality that seems a little broken, even with the most current firmware updates. While playing the player in shuffle mode, it seems to freeze randomly and sometimes even ends a song prematurely to skip on to the next song. I even had the player stop playing altogether a few times while in this shuffle mode. I use shuffle mode a lot, especially seeing as creating playlists can be frustrating at times. This bug has been a little annoying at times, although each firmware upgrade does seem to lesson the frequency at which these problems occur. I’m currently running the 1.02.09a firmware upgrade, however I have not had enough testing time with it to confirm whether this bug is still prevalent or not.
Conclusion:
I really do enjoy my Sansa View media player. I’ve had many hours of enjoyment over the last month, as well as a few frustrations. However, the overall feeling I get is that this is a great player that just has a few problems. I would think that most of these could be fixed through firmware upgrades, assuming the demand was there and the manufacturer wants to fix them. Whether or not those little issues are addressed does not take away from the fact that the Sansa View is a good product that is well worth the $150 investment. Look at other players in that price range and you will not find many, if any, that offer the features and storage capacity that this unit comes standard with.
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Authored By: dmschaos Owner, operator and proprietor. The big cheese, the boss. CEO and CFO. Technical Director, human resources, and supervisor. Web, server, and network administrator extraordinaire. Read more from this author
I didnt want to include this in the review, because I’m not entirely sure it’s exclusive to the View, but I did have a very strange thing happen to my system while the View was connected. It goes something like this:
I had a power outtage a few days ago. When the power came back on, my main system didnt complete it’s boot sequence, it was hanging at post. After a reboot, I tried to access the bios, but I couldnt get in. After clearing the cmos I was able to finally access the bios after about 30 min of “hang time”. I noticed that the boot sequence had the USB set as first boot and that’s when I realized my View was still connected to the USB port from the last recharge.
I initially kept the View connected and simply change the boot sequence to boot from my primary hdd. This however did’nt fix the hanging at post, so I then unplugged the View from the USB port, rebooted and viola’, it booted normally. I would have thought that changing the boot sequence would have fixed the problem, but it wasnt until the View was unplugged completely that my system would boot. I dont know if this is a problem with the view or with any personal media player that’s connected through the usb port.
Anyway, I hope that helps anyone who may run in to a similar problem to this in the future, as it did throw me for a loop until I was able to access the bios. Maybe unplugging the View should have been the first thing I did, but I never would have thought that the bios would try and load the OS from an mp3 player…