SanDisk Sansa e200 Series

While Apple's number one status is widely known when it comes to digital audio players, people are often surprised to learn which company holds the number two position. It’s not Sony. It’s not even iRiver. The company that sells the most MP3 players after Apple is in fact SanDisk, a company known primarily for its flash memory cards.

While the company has never offered a drive-based player to compete with Apple's large capacity iPods, SanDisk’s experience with flash memory technologies positioned them well for the recent explosion of the flash-based market. Confronted with Apple’s wildly successful iPod nano, SanDisk has released a direct competitor, the Sansa e200 Series. These new players are an overt attack on the iPod nano, and, as it turns out, an excellent alternative (if you can live without iTunes).

   

Introduction

The Sansa e250, e260 and e270 (with 2GB, 4GB and 6GB of storage, respectively) comprise the Sansa e200 Series, the newest members of the SanDisk Sansa family of flash-based digital audio players. The Sansa e200 Series players are an update to the now-dated e100 Series, which topped out at 1GB of internal storage and featured backlit, monochrome displays.

The e200 players feature high-resolution color screens, audio and video playback, still image viewing, an integrated FM tuner, a removable, replaceable battery and live recording of both voice and FM radio. These features are packed into a player measuring 3.5" (H) x 1.73" (W) x 0.49" (D) and weighing only 2.6-ounces.

Unlike many players on the market today, the new Sansa offers storage above and beyond that provided by internal memory; the Sansa e200 Series players feature an onboard microSD card reader for additional storage. At the time of this writing, microSD, or TransFlash, cards are available in capacities up to 1GB as of this writing.

Included with the Sansa e200 Series players is a USB 2.0 transfer cable, branded SanDisk earbuds, a protective slip-case, a lanyard, a printed Quick Start guide, and a software CD-ROM with a full User’s Manual in PDF format, a media converter utility and Rhapsody Jukebox Software.

Part 2: Look & Feel >>>

CHECK PRICES: Sansa e200 Series See e250 Retailers (2GB) See e260 Retailers (4GB) See e270 Retailers (6GB)

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