SanDisk Sansa c240
Thought I’d make a short post about the SanDisk Sansa c240 mp3-player I got a while ago (I ordered it with the Cresyn phones I mentioned in an earlier post, but due to some supplier hiccup they couldn’t deliver it until a couple of weeks later).
The selection process was pretty straightforward – my old player suffered from a loose headphone jack and I was tired of getting batteries for it all the time, so I went to an online store that had sent me a campaign code and selected the cheapest 1GB player with rechargeable battery available at that store.
I must say it turned out quite well, as the Sansa c240 scores quite well in the value-for-money category (the 2GB c250 is even better, but I was short on cash and wanted a pair of good phones as well). Besides my main requirements of storage and rechargeability, I also got nice color display and an SD Micro slot for expanding storage. Considering the price it feels pretty well built with a releatively solid, un-flimsy feel to it even though it’s all plastic, and it doesn’t look too bad (though it has to be said that you have to be a pretty bad designer to fail with basics like black, shiny trim and blue light).
Besides the drawback of being very hard to read without the back-light the display was the greatest surprise on a device in this price range. It is large enough to display four lines of text (about 15 characters wide) plus a header while browsing, and in playback mode it shows artist, track and album while displaying play mode, track number, and battery status at the top and playback status, progress bar and track timer and the bottom. Overall, the interface works quite well, with tracks sorted by artist, album, song and genre. As I said, the display hard to read unless the backlight is on, but I think the size still makes it better than the single line monochrome LCDs found on many similarly priced players.
When it comes to the sound, I have to say it’s what I expected – nothing to complain about, but not remarkable in any way. Good enough, in short. There’s also the standard five EQ presets plus a five band custom setting. I did, at first, think that the player felt a bit weak volume wise – it was just a bit over my comfort range when I cranked it to the max with the fairly sensitive Cresyn phones. I later found out that there’s an option to set the volume control to “loud”, which can be useful for those who want to use more power-hungry phones, while the “normal” setting is useful for getting the volume right with earphones.
So, I mentioned earphones, and I guess that makes it a good time to mention those included. They don’t sound particularly bad with any kind of music I tried, but the overall impression is dull. While they are far from the worst standard phones I’ve gotten with a portable music device, they are not among the very few exceptions to the rule that a small investment of 15-25 dollars or euros will make your new device sound much better.
So, what’s left to mention? According to specifications battery life is 16 hours, and that’s enough for my use which mainly is to entertain me during the half hour it takes to get from my door to my job. I haven’t tried the voice recorder, so I can’t say anything about that. Same goes for the photo display feature (it requires the images to be converted, and I haven’t found any reason to install the software). It has two transfer modes, MTP that allows transfer of WMA DRM files, and a mass storage mode when you only need to play unencrypted mp3s or WMAs (I also think that the MicroSD expansion slot is disabled in MTP mode).
To conclude, I have to say that the SanDisk Sansa c240 fulfilled my very basic requirements, and then some, for a reasonable price. So I’ll say it’s a good low-budget choice from a company that seems to begin to take serious interest in the media player market (the Wi-Fi enabled Sansa Connect looks pretty interesting, for example) instead of just being a memory manufacturer that decided to slap some basic playback electronics on their chips to make a few buck more.
And some Amazon links, good for finding more user reviews, and making me a buck or two when buying :)
SanDisk Sansa c240 (1GB) and SanDisk Sansa c250 (2GB) at Amazon.com
SanDisk Sansa c240 (1GB) and SanDisk Sansa c250 (2GB) at Amazon.co.uk
Not only is George Clooney an excellent actor and the kind of guy who might make me consider switching teams if he’d turn out to be gay, he also does great things on the other side of the camera – but this 
