Reviews Sandisk Sansa Connect
| Sandisk Sansa Connect |
| Written by Luck Kanthatham | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Friday, 06 April 2007 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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It is finally here. I can hardly believe it. I had been eyeing the Sansa Connect since I first saw it at CES a few months back. I even wrote numerous emails to Sandisk to let me review it but there was no reply. Who can resist the first mp3 player to actually put the Wifi feature to good use; unlike the Zune which uses the Wifi connection as if it was using Bluetooth. Introduction
First let me give you some technical specs on the Sansa Connect.
The Look
The Sansa Connect bears its resemblance to the Sansa e200-series players, except that is a tad bit wider and has a bigger screen. Coincidentally, its width and height are almost identical the the Motorola RAZR.
 
The player is equipped with a gorgeous high-resolution 2.2” LCD screen. Unfortunately, I was not able to find any information on what the resolution is; it is not provided in the user guide nor it is available on Sandisk's web site. Whatever it is, it is bright and crisp.
Like the e200-series players, the Sansa Connect has a thumbwheel at the bottom, which glows a warm blue light when you scroll it. Gone are the dedicated home, fast forward, rewind and pause buttons available in the previous players. Rocking the thumbwheel in different directions now mimics those functions; yes, just like the iPod.
There two dedicated volume buttons on the left. The power button has been moved up to the top instead of at the bottom. And the earphone jack is now at the bottom instead of the top. The MicroSD slot is still available to the right of the player. A built-in speaker is located in the back, piping out decent audio but otherwise very useful.
The Interface Rundown
First off, to really get the most out of the player, you'd need a Wifi network. Connecting the Sansa Connect to a Wifi network is rather straight-forward. The only problem I have is that I had to scroll through a one-line display of characters. Since my WPA password is quite long, this process took me about a minute or so. But once I entered the password, I don't have worry about it again.
At the heart of the Sansa Connect's navigation is the Home Menu, which comes up when you press the top portion of the thumbwheel. Here you'd find the following selections:
 
I am most excited about is being able to stream music via LAUNCHcast. It doesn't require any subscription fees in order to listen to some of the best music from a multitude of genres from Pop to Rap; yes, I'm cheap. Once you have selected a song, it takes about 1 – 3 seconds to load. Since the music is streamed, fast forwarding or rewinding the song takes about a second or two to rebuffer, depending on the internet connection.
The player is tightly integrated with Yahoo! Music Connect To Go (that's a pretty long service name in my opinion). You can sync the music on the device with Yahoo! Jukebox via USB or you can use the “Get More Music” option to directly download the music to the device. You can do this in two ways: you can either click on the song you like or use the soft ZING key to tag the song or the whole album for download. The download happens instantly but this is all done in the background so you are still free to interact with the unit. To check the progress of your downloads, you can use the built-in Download Manager to track them. Once the tagged music is downloaded, it magically shows up in the Music Library.
 
But what fun is listening to music all by your lonesome self? With the Friends function, you can find out what others (either on another Sansa Connect or Yahoo Messenger) are listening to. You can also recommend songs to your friends. This functionality is a little bit different from Zune's “social” feature in which one Zune sensd songs to another Zune. With the Sansa Connect, one sends the recommendation so the other can download it from the service.
Like most mp3 players, the Sansa Connect can display photos. However, this one kicks it up a notch (Emeril must be proud) by allowing the user to browse the photos from their Flickr account. This works flawlessly. Once you are logged on, you can begin browsing through the different albums on your account. Photos show up as thumbnails; just click on the desired picture to display it in full screen. You can also display photos from the inserted MicroSD card. Now, the only drawback is that you can't actually store photos on to the internal memory. I guess Sandisk doesn't want your photos to intermix with the music on the Sansa Connect.
A Tad Bit of Disappointments
I guess, it is just impossible to make a perfect mp3 player. Normally, most products retain their functionality while adding more features. This is not the case with the Sansa Connect. Yes, it does have Wifi support, speakers and all the other enhancements from the e200-series players. But Sandisk also took out the movie support, the FM radio, and the voice recorder. I am not the designer of this device so I can't say for sure why they took all those “important” features out. There must be some technical reasons for that. However, I'm disappointed nonetheless.
Another down side is the slightly-confusing interface. When a list of menu selections shows up, I do tend to get confused whether to use the thumbwheel to scroll, click on the center button, or click the forward button. I guess that is just a personal preference since I am just so used to the iPod way of navigation. I kept scrolling the thumbwheel to adjust the volume, forgetting that I have to use the dedicated volume buttons instead.
Lastly, it would be nice if I could sync the music stored on the computer wirelessly instead of via the USB cable. It would be much more convenient.
Conclusion
Sandisk has another winner here; I have no doubt. I am thoroughly impressed with the features available on this little device. Once you hooked this player up to your wifi network, it is almost impossible to put it down. This is what the Zune should have been. Instead of sending songs to one another and then separately listen to the music, you can just unplug the earphones and actually listen to the music while interacting with your friends. With this device, I can honestly say “Welcome to the Social.”
Pros:
Cons:
Verdict: Highly Recommended
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Comments (38)
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jim
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I couldn't find any info on the battery life (with or without WiFi). How long does it go without a recharge? |
Bubba Longham
said:
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I got to play with this device this weekend. You don't need to subscribe to any music service to use the WiFi. It will play Launchcast without any subscrition, you just can't download songs if you don't have a subscription. Also, if you want to search for a specific song you have to do it through Yahoo Music Jukebox and then transfer it to the device. |
Mak
said:
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Thanks for your answers about the SD Card. That is too bad, but still might work out for me. If I add a 2GB card, will my player be able to add the songs on that card to my library so that I can scroll through the entirety of my song collection -- whether contained on the SD or main memory? On the Cowon, you have two separate libraries (which is less of an inconvenience as you can essentially use the SDHC as your main library, which can be 16 GB). Also, will there be an 8GB version of this device? If so, maybe my best move is just to wait for that one. Thanks. |
Luck Kanthatham
said:
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I have to be frank, Mak. I do not have a MicroSD card on hand so I could not answer the question. As far as the 8GB version. I really don't know what Sandisk has plans for this device. But thanks for asking. |
suki
said:
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but are you able to get to other sites like maybe youtube or your own site to get internet radio? or is it really just yahoo...cuz then a PSP sounds better... |
Kevin
said:
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I'm already a heavy LaunchCast user and have my "personal" station programmed. Can I download--free--my station or is it only available when I'm connected and streaming? |
Luck Kanthatham
said:
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Suki, there is no web browser on the device so you can't just go from site to site. If you like the PSP then go with the PSP. Personally, I don't think you can actually compare the Connect to the PSP though. They're totally different. |
Luck Kanthatham
said:
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Kevin, the LAUNCHCast stations are only available when you are connected to the internet via wifi. You can only stream from the service. However with Yahoo Music, you can download songs to the device. |
DDM
said:
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The reason this player is offers a different feature set and interface than the e200 series: This device was designed by a different company, who hawked their prototype to companies at an electronic show. Sandisk bought the design, and asked for a few modifications such as the addition of the microSD slot. Therefore, the lineage of the two models are not the same. |
DP
said:
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The ZING engine is hot--mobile, Wi-Fi, and streaming! But, in addition to limited subscriptions and downloads, it could access the full breadth and depth of free Internet streams. Like the Radeo Internet Player--more than 10,000 stations, 20,000 shows, and 800,000 episodes--broadcasts, webcasts, and podcasts: http://www.radeo.net. |
InSearchOfPerfection
said:
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I guess I'm the only one in the world who utilizes the FM tuner as I do. Where I find it so useful is that I frequently go to places where the seminar or speech is being locally-broadcast on FM. So having an mp3 device that can not only tune FM, but also record it, is an absolute requirement for my purchase when it comes to a portable audio/media device. This also highlights the second thing that I find so appealing, but very uncommon: standard batteries. When recording for hours, and your USB-charging, non-replaceable internal battery runs out, what are you supposed to do? Oh, and a card slot. Always a card slot for godssakes. I understand I'm not gonna get a card slot if I want a shuffle-sized device, but there's little excuse not to have one in larger devices, except that it might slow the upgrade cycle. Sorry for the rant. |
Dave
said:
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By the way, you do NOT need to use Yahoo Jukebox to sync music onto this player. It is an MTP device, and can be synced with WMP or the excellent MediaMonkey, for example. Also, you can drag-and-drop songs into the player with Windows Explorer. |
coocoocatchoo
said:
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  :-  :- ok im really upset can someone pleez tell me how to do this if i have a zune mp3 |
Jerry
said:
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I just picked one of these up for $150 yesterday and it's pretty cool. I don't plan to subscribe to any Yahoo service or install any new software so I was glad to see that it works just fine with Winamp. I can send songs and podcasts that I have subscribed to via Winamp or through Windows explorer as an external drive. Very simple and straightforward. I doubt I would have paid the $250 that it was listed as when it first came out but for $150 it seems to be a cool little player with access to Yahoo's internet radio and my flickr photos. It would be much cooler if I could access shoutcast streams because I have a few that I love to listen to. Still, the Yahoo streams are OK if I get sick of what I have loaded on it and don't want to lug my laptop around for connectivity to internet radio. I've just synced up and added a whole chunk of All Songs Considered so I should be good for a little while. |
Ben
said:
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The player now supports video playback which automatically updates when you access a WIFI network for the first or second time. |
NYP9008
said:
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Hello. I need help. See I have this kind of MP3 Player but the problem is that I don't know the passwords to gain WiFi connection. I mostly have Maness Wireless & Baylis Wireless but they're both locked and they each need a WiFi password in order to unlock them and use them. Please, if anyone is a whiz at this whole thing, please tell me what can I do to find the passwords for these Wifi connections that are locked. thank You. |
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