SanDisk Sansa m250 (2GB)

Reviewed by

James Kim

on 10/31/2005

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Page 2

The m200 plays MP3, WMA, DRM WMA (including subscription-based music), and Audible file formats. The only major feature missing is line-in recording, and you can make voice recordings in only one mediocre quality setting. The FM tuner has 20 preset stations and an autoscan feature. You can browse the m200's music library by title, artist, album, genre, spoken word, and recordings, and it supports playlists as well as an on-the-go Favorites playlist of up to 30 songs. The main menu includes Play Music, FM Radio, Recorder, and Settings, and overall navigation is logical and easy, thanks in part to the big controller buttons. The blue-backlit LCD shows artist, song, and album info as well as file format, bit rate, and elapsed time, but the blue backlight could be a bit brighter and provide more contrast. We'd also like to see a bookmarking feature for audiobooks. You also get a stopwatch, though.

The SanDisk Sansa m200 series' screen is basic and useful, but we'd prefer better backlighting.

Sound quality is similar to that of past SanDisk players and definitely not the best we've heard, but most people will be satisfied. The equalizer settings (Pop, Classical, Jazz, Rock, and a custom five-band EQ) help shape the sound to your liking. The SanDisk Sansa m200 cooperates well with Windows Media Player 10 and subscription-based applications such as Napster To Go; it works without a hitch via drag and drop in Windows Explorer, even automatically organizing your files. Though there are other low-cost flash options for subscription services, the m200 series offers the best deal so far. Also, the m200 series shows up as a drive in Mac OS X. Battery life from a single AAA battery is rated for 19 hours, which is decent but not great for a flash player; remember to stock extra batteries. CNET Labs was able to coax only 18.5 hours out of the m200 series. Transfer time over USB 2.0 was on the poor side at 1.1MB per second.