SanDisk Sansa 4GB MP3 Player

SanDisk� Sansa� 4 GB e260 MP3 Player With Travel Case Kit

(Costco.ca)

170$

This is the first hand-held portable video player I've reviewed, and it was indeed a fun toy.

It comes with a leather case & protective plastic screen cover-very important for today's hard-plastic for casing society.

In order to see videos one has to convert an .avi or .mpeg file using the enclosed software, which I give a 4/5 for user interface. The files are then split into typically 8 minute file segments. After each video segment was completed, the screen would automatically bring you to the video folder you'd opened the first one from, and highlight the proceeding file. Kinda like a retarded dog would bring you one slipper, and then wait at the other slipper looking at you to ask you to bring it over as well. There is no option for selecting several videos at once (as one might assume seeing how each movie you convert is broken down into 8 minute videos). The only benefit I found with the 8 minute break-down is that fast forwarding and rewinding was cumbersome, so I found myself scrolling through 8 minute 'chapters' of a movie. Definetly some work required.

The video displays 90 degrees to how everything else is displayed, for reasons unknown to me. All this means is that you have to hold the player sideways while watching. Ironically the fast-forward and rewind buttons are now misaligned. An analogy would be holding a video game controller sideways and still trying to play. Keep in mind with videos your not typically adjusting as often as a song, but still, no excuse for poor user-friendly interface.

Unfortunately the computer interface did not allow for editing song names or creating playlists. Songs could only be deleted (not copied) from the player. Perhaps this is some attempt at appeasing the copy-right gods. Personally, creating playlists is an issue for me, so I wasn't happy with this.

The only playlist I could create was the default 'Go' List, which unfortunately on several occasions I deleted all songs from. If you scroll down the songs in your 'go' list, the very bottom one is a great song called 'clear go list'. Yeah. Reminded me of the Far Side cartoon with the fat kid in the airplane, with his hand on the seat features, "Volume up, volume down, flight attendant, light on, light off, wings stay on, wings fall off".

Recharging the player is done through a USB cord. Essentially this limits the player for vacation trips where you're not planning on bringing your computer. Although a bright side to this is you have an extremely standard AC power adaptor in the sense that if you're in a kenyan internet cafe, you can always plug in your USB cord and give it a quick charge.