Although the playback screen offers all the info you'd want, most of the Sansa View's interface is fairly uninspiring. You can set different wallpaper colors, but they all appear a bit washed out, and there's no option to set a photo as your backdrop. And although the main menu with its magnifying icons is graphically pleasing, the inner menus feature small font and a rather blah overall feel. That said, music organization is good, sorting by artist, album, and so on; and we're keen on the photo thumbnails in that respective menu. Also, we're happy to see a separate podcast sort, which allows for easy organization of that content. Another bonus: Although SanDisk's documentation calls only for Windows support, we had no trouble attaching the View to a MacBook (running only Mac OS) and transferring audio files.
In addition to standard MP3 files, the Sansa View can play back a healthy array of other digital media files. There's direct support for JPEG photos and MPEG4, WMV, and H.264 videos. This player can even take videos purchased from services such as Amazon Unboxed and TiVoToGo, and it should have no problem with video podcasts acquired through iTunes. The Sansa Media Converter, available as a download, can transcode other (unprotected) formats for View. On the audio side, you get support for WAV, AAC (unprotected), Audible, and both protected and unprotected WMA. The player will work with any Windows Media-based audio service, such as Napster or Rhapsody. If you get tired of digital audio, switch over to the onboard FM tuner, which features autoscan and 20 preset slots.
The Sansa View's tested battery life of 32.3 hours for audio is certainly formidable, and the video battery life of 5 hours should satisfy most power users--though we'd be more impressed if it matched the 7-hour rating. Audio quality isn't quite as inspiring, though this player certainly doesn't sound bad. The downside is that--other than electronica--music tends to be lacking in bass, and we get a lot of low-end distortion when we adjust to compensate via the five-band user EQ. And this is despite using test earbuds (Shure SE310s) and headphones (Ultrasone HFi-700s) that offer great low-end response. However, music in general sounds pretty good, with nice high-end clarity and warm mids. It's not as sparkly as the Sony NWZ-A810, but the average listener should be satisfied. Despite the aforementioned dimming effect of the screen, photos look sharp and bright with good color saturation. Videos, however, did suffer a bit from the dimness, and we noticed some slight pixelation at points, but they still looked passable.
