Ipod: Who Needs It? - a Review of the Sansa M250 Mp3 Player

It seems to be getting harder to find what you really need. You can't just buy a car these days; you have to decide whether you want dozens of extras, and you can be sure the car salesmen will make you feel guilty if you don't buy a new safety gizmo because "you're too cheap for your family". Similarly, the iPod has just been upgraded to 80 GB and 160 GB. If you don't get the biggest mp3 player possible, think of all the music you'll be missing out on!

Bullsh**.

A small mp3 player will suit most people; you don't listen to that much music people. You don't need to waste your time with video, and you already have a cell phone. For these reasons, I'm going to tell you about the Sansa m250, which fulfills all my needs, and will fulfill yours.

Pros

First off, this thing is cheap. You know how people try to sell their product by saying you can by this by not going to Starbucks for a month? You can probably muster enough money for this mp3 player by avoiding Starbucks for under two weeks. I bought it at a 2006 Thanksgiving special for fifty dollars, now on Amazon, the going price is seventy dollars and less from other sellers.

Secondly, the Sansa m250 is large enough to take care of all your musical cravings. It has a 2 GB hard drive, which is more than sufficient for the average person. Two GB is enough for about 1000 songs. How many people listen to five hundred songs? Not me! I have all the songs I listen to and some songs I listen to on the Sansa m250. Also, you can keep listening to songs for quite a while! One AAA battery runs for about 19 hours, which is great battery life. If you're using rechargeable batteries, you're hardly paying a pittance to listen to this mp3 player.

Next, this thing is durable. No, it's not some sissy iPod that is going to break unless it is wrapped in ten layers of Kevlar. The Sansa m250 has taken much beating from me: it's been chucked at people, dropped, crushed by books in a backpack, and slept on. However, all it has to show for all its battles is a few scratches. I have reason to believe that the Sansa m250 is self-healing; it might just have mystical powers. Since the Sansa m250 is a flash-based mp3 player, you can shake it all you want but it will not skip. This makes it effective to use while working out.

Lastly, the Sandisk Sansa m250 comes with many accessories. The Sansa comes with a built-in microphone and voice recorder. The microphone is not a high quality device, but it does its job adequately. When you buy the mp3 player new, it comes with a pair of ear buds. The ear buds are nowhere near the quality of an excellent pair of Sennheisers, but they are better than the annoying little mosquitoes Apple hands out with their iPods. Also, the Sansa m250 comes with a feature rarely found in mp3 players: a radio. The FM radio comes with 20 presets, all the most popular music stations. The Sansa also comes with a mini-USB to USB connector which also works as an effective radio antenna.

Cons

Despite the greatness of this device, all is not well.

The main nuisance of the Sansa m250 is that you cannot organize it easily. Making playlists is a pain as there as the documentation both online and given with the mp3 player are both sparse in information given. The easiest way to make playlists is to change the file settings of the songs you want in a playlist to be the same, since the Sansa m250 allows you to locate songs by artist, album, and song title. Using some software like Musicmatch Jukebox, you can make playlists by organizing by artist or album. There is a playlist feature on the mp3 player, but it is not easy to use.

My second, and last complaint, is that the radio is not of amazing quality. Often, I have found it difficult to get a radio signal and had to lift up the mp3 player to have a chance of listening to the radio.

Conclusion

An audiophile may not be receptive to the simplistic idea of the Sansa m250. But if you're normal, or even 20% normal, like me, you'll love this thing! I give it 4.5/5.