I have the 16GB version of this.
I can’t say anything about video playback because I only use it for music, but the screen is decent and the audio is good quality. It gets plenty loud enough for me.
The battery tends to last a very long time if I don’t do anything to turn the screen on–and even if the hold switch is engaged, pressing buttons will turn the screen on. I’ve often left it on playing music overnight and woken up with it still playing, and with 50+% battery left.
A few odd things–first, it freezes sometimes when I try to skip a song. Playback continues uninterrupted, but the screen locks up and the buttons do nothing for anywhere between five and 30 seconds. The problem usually goes away after a while, but it is annoying.
Second, sometimes it readjusts its battery estimate significantly. I’ll turn it on and see a very low battery, but after it’s been running for a while it’ll report about half battery left.
Third, the navigation wheel on this thing is mechanical–it spins. If something gets underneath it, it will stick. Mine used to stick on and off, but all you need to fix that is a can of air, or even you mouth. Just blowing underneath the wheel will free it up again, unless you’ve got something really nasty under there.
LOL. Not that I disagree with your post, but the one thing that I can say the iPods do rule is in the accessory department. There are so many iPod-related accessories I bought one so I could play my MP3s as an alarm clock. But I like to get my music from a Russian MP3 site for about $.15 a song, so my main player is now my Zune.
I bought the e260 last time…referb. Great unit. I haven’t had any problems…love it!! Only problem I had…in very cold weather, the battery drains…but it’s rechargeable!
Great Unit.
No battery probs.
Use it 6 hours a Day.
Sansa makes a great unit. I don’t have an ipod…BUT ripping my own MP3’s is free, and my 56 GB library is still growing…Wonder what that much music would cost for the ipod???
Honestly, AVI is a rather “raw” format, and you can easily convert it to MPEG4. That’s one thing I do like about my Zune… the software auto-magically converts my video to play on my Zune.
Just a warning: The View, unlike the E2xx series of the Fuze series, is well HATED. Check over at the Sandisk/Sansa forums. BAD BAD firmware, bad catastrophic failures, etc. I wouldn’t buy one of these personally–wait for a Fuze or E2xx to come on sale…
Got 2 of these in the last Sack-o-Crud, along with 8 e200s.
Nice little player. Very shiny. But you can’t switch around the batteries/memory chips/faceplates like the e200s. And they have a habit of freezing upon returning from sleep mode.
I got a refurb 8GB Fuze off of newegg a while back for ~$60. I’m still using my trusty old beat-up e260 (with 8GB µSDHC) as my primary until the Fuze port of Rockbox is released. They’re getting pretty close, and (iirc) the main thing now is to improve the installation process and fix some CPU usage issues
Well, I picked up a refurbed Sansa e250 player, and it took a 4 GB microSD card easily. It wouldn’t take an 8 GB, however. I’m thinking that with this View…do they have 16 GB microSD cards yet?
If so, you could get 24 GB of video on this bad boy, and 16GB if there’s only 8 GB’ers out there is not bad for…about $70…
Yeah, but you have to watch out. Apparently black headphones are difficult to find for them (ipoos)!
I actually dislike iPoos because they do have so many accessories. That and they’re overpriced and don’t offer the same feature-rich content as competitors. Just nifty features that competitors improve for their follow-up model.
Rockbox is great on an E series (like my E260) because it provides support for the larger micro SDHC cards. It appears that’s not necessary with this model. Still, Rockbox would be nice to have. But not a dealbreaker if you want a nice cheap flash-based player.
