SanDisk Sansa e130 512 MB Digital Audio Player with SD Expansion Slot

I had been using my phone to play mp3s, but when I got to the point where I was listening to music at work for about 8 hours a day, I found that my Windows Mobile phone's rechargeable battery left much to be desired (a phone that plays mp3s is great, but sometimes it's best to have a device that has more focused goals!). I decided to get a new device specifically for when I'm at work. I had some specific things that I wanted my device to do, and I looked around here on Amazon. I found a lot of iPods and Zunes and countless others that did WAY more than I needed them to and DIDN'T do the things that I wanted them to, and were very expensive. After a GREAT deal of searching, I found this little device buried under all of the extraordinarily flashy and overpriced mp3 players, and its specifications were exactly what I was looking for, so I ordered it. I've had it for three weeks now, and I have to say, I have not been disappointed.One of the things I was looking for was something that used AA or AAA batteries. I didn't want rechargeable batteries, because I would need to bring it home every night to recharge. This runs on one AAA battery that lasts for quite some time. A single AAA runs for 17 hours. Not bad. Some people would prefer rechargeable batteries like iPods, and that's fine (I believe SanDisk has a similar model that uses rechargeable batteries), but there are many situations where, even if you need to buy batteries, it's just much easier than recharging.I didn't want anything that played video. For my purposes, and I'm sure some others' as well, it's a waste of money. I'm not saying that video iPods and Zunes are stupid by any stretch (I watch video on my phone frequently), but I was only planning on using this for music. Now, I know that there is the cheaper iPod Shuffle that doesn't play video, but I can tell you right now, this is about $25 cheaper than the newest Shuffle on Amazon and there are other reasons why the e130 is waaaay better (and look at the reviews of the third generation Shuffle and you will see that it has some serious problems). This is also only $5 more than the second generation Shuffle and is better in pretty much every conceivable way.I wanted something that could use SD cards instead of an exclusively internal memory. Personally, I don't understand why there aren't more mp3 players like that. I used to use a (now obsolete) NetMD player from Sony, and I had to deal with some really horrible and slow software to get music onto it. But, because the e130 can read SD cards, I don't have to install any software on my computer. And I haven't. I've never even plugged the e130 into my computer at all. If you feel that you need to change what's in the internal memory or if you don't have an SD card reader, then you will probably need to install the software, but I just put all of the music that I wanted onto my SD card and went on my way. I don't have to deal with iTunes, SonicStage, or Windows Media Player; I just copy the music from my harddrive to the SD card through Windows Explorer. This is incredibly convenient. I am happier using a 2 gb SD card than I would be using the 4 gb internal memory of the new generation of the Shuffle, and even more so than the 1 gb internal memory of the second generation Shuffle. This is by far the most important reason I decided to go with this one.It's simple, too. By simple, I don't just mean easy to use (though it is that), but I mean that it doesn't have a ton of completely unnecessary features that raise the price (like the third generation Shuffle's VoiceOver, something that is inferior to the simple, traditional LCD that has the name of the song and group written so that you can just read it). The only unnecessary feature that I have discovered is a stopwatch, but that obviously isn't going to raise the price.There are a handful of downsides, though, I will admit, and I think it's important to share those because I often feel that I learn more from a product's negative qualities than its positive ones.For starters, it doesn't list songs by the order that they're on the album, but alphabetically. That's a little strange to me, but I prefer random so it's not much of a problem for me. It also does the same when you use the "Play All" playlist, so it doesn't group together songs from the same musical group, but lists out every single song on your card in alphabetical order. In some ways, though, this is the best random function I've ever had, so that has actually worked to an advantage for me.Secondly, as has been mentioned in previous reviews, the volume knob is a little finicky. It's not perfectly consistent. Sometimes one click will turn it way down or way up; sometimes it's not noticeable. It's consistent enough, though, and hasn't become much of a problem. The buttons are also kind of finicky, as sometimes I have to press them twice because they didn't do anything the first time. Again, though, this hasn't become much of a problem.The headphones that come with it are earbuds, too. I hate earbuds because they hurt. But, I just use the same trusty headphones that I had already been using, so it's no problem. I actually wasn't planning to use whatever headphones came with them anyway, and I wouldn't have even noticed if they didn't come with headphones at all. Headphones aren't expensive even if you don't have any already.But, these problems are extremely minor, and they don't compare to the horrible downsides that I saw when I looked at the second and third generation iPod Shuffles. (If you're wondering why I keep comparing it to the Shuffle, it's because I would say that that are in the same price class and ultimately have the same goal of simplicity without sacrificing functionality. Obviously, I think that the e130 FAR surpasses both the second and third generation Shuffles.) In the end, I am extremely happy with this mp3 player, and I'm pretty sure most other people would be, too!

I really like this player but for me, it has a critical shortcoming...no playlist capability. I am a road bike cyclist and I also teach an indoor cycling class. When I am on the 50 miler, having the e130 with a 1 or 2G sd card helps. It's like a big iPod shuffle with the capability of scrolling by artist, album and song selection. I have a 512mb iPod Shuffle and it's not big enough and besides, every now and then, I'd like to listen to a particular song.So, for a road ride (or whatever your time consuming hobby is) the e130 great, although if you have a 2G SD card in the unit, expect to wait about 30 seconds when you first turn it on as it searches the SD media for new files (annoying but not a huge deal). Once on, and playing it's great.The major pain is no playlist capability. Since I teach a cycling class, it's important to have the music playing in order, since workouts are kind of choreographed. I've downloaded the latest firmware updates, tried Sandisk tech's playlist fix for the e200 series (doesn't work for the e130), looked at the blog fixes (I'm fairly tech saavy but Linux is over my head). Nothing works.So, if you're an iTunes user like me and need a playlist in order, here's the clunky fix I came up with. First plug the e130 into the computer (remove any sd cards before you do this) with the usb. Erase any song files on the internal e130 memory. (Keep your road tunes on the sd card and remove the card so that all the e130 can read is songs in the RAM memory.) Next build your playlist in iTunes. Then click on the first song in that list to highlight it. Then hit control r, which highlights the song's mp3 file in windows explorer. Drag the file over to the e130 directory in windows explorer. Do this for each song. (This saves you from having to look for each mp3 file manually in windows explorer.) If you don't need an order of play, then you're done. If you need them ordered, go to step 2.Step 2: Click on the e130 directory in windows explorer. Right click on the first song in your desired order. Highlight properties. Highlight summary. Click on the song title in the Title area under Description, which should highlight the song title as editable (make sure you click on the actual song title, not the title icon). Edit the song title by adding a 1 or the letter 'a' before the song. Continue with song 2 using 2 or a 'b' until you finish your list. I prefer to use a b c d, etc because some software will play a 15 song set with 1, then 11, 12,etc. I didn't test the e130 for this. You may want to try numbers.So now you have the playlist with the order you want. Warning, you can't just edit filename of the mp3 file to order the songs because the e130 is not looking at filenames. It is looking at another field in the file description, part of the id3 information. That is the 'title' field that is referred to above in the windows properties. Lastly, be sure to edit these files on the e130 directory, not the files on your computer if you want to maintain your itunes library intact and in sequence. Fyi, for a 15 song (1 hour) playlist, this took me about 7-10 minutes. yeah, it's clunky and a pain, but if you're like me and you gotta have it...Sound quality is decent and the e130 plays remarkably well through amplifiers (better than the iPod shuffle, which suffers from clipping unless you turn the amp way up). You may need to turn the WOW sound setting off if you want to crank it up in the car stereo. Get yourself some better headphones. I like the Sony MDR-J11G sports headphones, which are decent sound quality and super efficient. They cost about $12-15 bucks delivered on the internet.Lastly, battery time is pretty good for a single AAA battery. I got a couple hybrid rechargeables and they last about 12-14 hours per charge.Gosh, I keep thinking if Sandisk would only add some firm ware to correct this seemingly minor software issue, they would sell a lot of these. Maybe they already have with the latest series.

great item, just what the daughter wanted,