SanDisk Sansa e280 8 GB MP3 Player (Black)

This is a review I wrote of the Sansa e260R player. Before you buy a Sansa, do some online searches at help sites to see the kinds of problems they tend to have....

Worked great at first. But after about six months, the hard drive had serious errors. I contacted Sandisk, who tried several "fixes" to get it running again, but it was frozen and totally unusable. Since the warranty wasn't up yet, they sent a replacement.

A week after the warranty expired on the replacement Sansa, it did the same thing. I spent a week trying every fix I could find online. Nothing worked. It's gone. A little research (Google "Sansa" "refresh database" and "error" to see what I mean) showed that Sansa MP3 players have a terrible reputation for freezing up permanently, so beware! My brother received a Sansa for Christmas, and it died within 24 hours of him ripping off the wrapping paper.

According to reviews, and asking sales reps which players get returned the most (the Sansas, they said), I recommend a Sony Walkman MP3 player instead. Some are compatible with Rhapsody, work with audiobooks, and have a terrific sound and beautiful display for a fraction of the price of a Sansa (just buy it at Walmart... it is $30-40 cheaper than Amazon.)

I've had the Sandisk Sansa e280 for well over a year now. I love it. It holds so much. Easy to use. Very durable. I have no real problems with it. It has dropped in price since I bought mine, but it is still a great value. That said, the volume wheel does get a little stuck. I try to up the volume and it goes down instead. Same when I try to down the volume it sometimes goes up. But I use it every day. It does not do this all the time. But overall I am very happy with it.

I did some research to decide if I wanted a MP3 player or an iPOD. My kids have an iPOD. I just joined a gym and there are TVs that you can watch and listen to if you dial into a radio setting. I really wanted a radio option, which iPODs don't have. Also, if you are listening to the radio and want to record a song, you simply press "record" and the song sounds awesome. This MP3 player was a better deal and very easy to use when downloading songs or syncing CDs. A kid could do it. You have to buy your accessories online as I haven't found any in retail stores. I had mine for about 2 weeks when the battery went dead, completely. I called Sansa and they sent me a new one. I like mine so much that I just bought one for my son who is going back to college.
If you are going to buy one, which I would recommend to anyone, go ahead and buy your extra chargers and cover and maybe even a docking station/radio/alarm clock online at the same time. If you want an iPOD just for the name and look, consider the fact that this product looks very similar to a iPOD nano. Also, I didn't like the earbuds so I bought some from Target called "Skullcandy". They are the best ever and Target has the cheapest prices on them. All other stores really jack up the prices on these awesome earbuds. Hope this helps.

Product works great,rockbox increases functionality and the original firmware doesn't get altered so you can always boot up into default Sandisk firmware!

I've immensely enjoyed the Sansa. It replaced a rio carbon that died which I had for years. I liked the carbon but this Sansa is light years ahead of it. I use the Sansa almost exclusively for listening to music. It holds a lot for it's size and I've also added the 2 gig micro disc to increase the capacity even more. It syncs up well with my Windows media player and it virtually never crashes (alas the poor carbon crashed fairly regularly). Great value in my opinion; no real complaints.