More clues about SanDisk's 8GB Sansa

So it's starting to look like those leaked pictures we saw last month supposedly depicting an unannounced 8GB flash player from SanDisk are the real deal. You'll recall that an Anything But iPod forum member claiming to be a SanDisk tester posted a shot of what's generally referred to as the Sansa e280, and now the eagle-eyed editors over at ABi have discovered even more tantalizing clues on the company's website. The most telling bit of evidence comes when you launch the 360-degree demos for either the 4GB e260 or 2GB e250, which instead of featuring the players' respective capacities on the backside, show a model clearly adorned with an "8GB"  label -- see the screenshot, right. Furthermore, the entire Sansa lineup is being hit with price cuts, which could be an indication that a product launch is imminent. If SanDisk is in fact able to get this model to market before Apple breaks us off with an 8GB nano -- aluminum enclosure and all -- it would seem to do more for the company's market share than a negative advertising campaign ever could.

[Via Anything But iPod]

[jonathan @ Jul 11th 2006 11:31AM]

The Sansa is definitely awesome looking, all I was waiting for was a bigger capacity to pick it up. I'm waiting for this to come true.

[Tommy @ Jul 11th 2006 11:54AM]

Does anybody know for the Sansa e260, what software needs to be installed on your computer to transfer media over? I'd like to recommend it to someone over the Nano, but don't know what the interface is like.

[Spyvie @ Jul 11th 2006 11:56AM]

This device is almost the perfect DAP, I especially like that it’s switchable between mass storage and play for sure mode. The only negatives are a rough feeling wheel and a proprietary USB cable

[Spyvie @ Jul 11th 2006 11:58AM]

Tommy,
It's fully drag and drop compliant if you want it to be, or you can use MP10... switchable in the Sansa'a menu

[sideburnz @ Jul 11th 2006 11:59AM]

That looks pretty cool, I like the on the fly FM recorder function. And personally 8GB is pretty decent if you're going to be using it just for music. I find that 30GB ipod is too much space and rather bulky for working out, etc. An the 4GB nano is too little.

Does anyone know/have a size comparison between this and the nano? I couldnt find the dimensions on the sandisk website.

[Ihar `Philips` Filipau @ Jul 11th 2006 12:06PM]

Tommy: Sansa is MTP compatible. MTP is M$' Media Transfer Protocol.

Windows Media Player can it. WinAmp can upload too. Thou I found that most reliable way is to switch the device into Mass Storage mode. WMPlayer sucks overall and has bugs in track numbering while uploading (tracks get on player in random order). WinAmp has it's own portion of bugs - e.g. it can't convert unsipported characters in file names during

To date I have no single problem plainly copying tracks to device attached as USB mass storage. Sansa correctly recognizes all the tracks.

P.S. Contras of my Sansa e260. Doesn't have Unicode fonts - e.g. iPods display international names w/o problems. Doesn't support losless codecs, it does support *only* ordinary WMA and MP3. In other words MP3@320kbps is only way to get good quality. No WMA/Losless, no FLAC, no AAC, no OGG Vorbis. :-/

[Ben @ Jul 11th 2006 12:07PM]

Sansa and Nano pic.

http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/11/0,,i=116343&sz=1,00.jpg

[Spyvie @ Jul 11th 2006 12:11PM]

The Sansa is a little thicker than the Nano, but it has a nicer screen and doesn't scratch as easy

[jonathan @ Jul 11th 2006 12:12PM]

I know you can make it into a drag and drop mode to put music on it, which makes it compatible with macs for the most part. I wonder why Sandisk doesn't say that you can use it with macs, only Windows XP, on their site.

Now, being able to use a mac and drag my songs onto the Sansa and make my albums and everything, that's great. But would I be able to make playlists?

[sideburnz @ Jul 11th 2006 12:15PM]

Sweet, thanks for the pic Ben.

[Tommy @ Jul 11th 2006 12:22PM]

Thanks Spyvie and Philips! I'm definitely recommending this to my friend, and probably getting my wife one, too.

[Tim UF @ Jul 11th 2006 12:24PM]

I dont think the Nano supports video (i could be wrong) but the Sensa does. It comes with software for converting most video file types to a type comaptable with the player. and the screen on it is awesome!

Lets not forget the upgradable nature of the sensa also, it has a transflash slot on the side good for an extra gig of memory.

[louis @ Jul 11th 2006 12:24PM]

Any idea of when this update will be released to market?

[Spyvie @ Jul 11th 2006 12:28PM]

More Sansa love... user replaceable battery

[sideburnz @ Jul 11th 2006 12:30PM]

I was seriously thinking about getting the nano after reading yesterdays post about it being 8GB....but Sandisk has so much more to offer. Unless Apple really does something worthwhile to change my mind the Sansa wins in my books.

[scott @ Jul 11th 2006 12:43PM]

wow! no support for osx and no aac compatibility truly make this an ipod killer! oh wait, nevermind.

[Eric @ Jul 11th 2006 12:51PM]

Yeah, Scott, because oh so many iPod users ARE OSX users. Oh wait, they aren't.

[The Dude @ Jul 11th 2006 12:51PM]

To get it straight, I don't think this is killing anything, cuz the nano isn't nearly as big of a deal as the hard drive iPod. Whatever . . . I'm just hoping it doesn't drop below 175, as I just ordered the 4GB from amazon . . .

[Dubb @ Jul 11th 2006 1:00PM]

It really is an excellent DAP, I have the 250, would recommend over the Nano. How Apple sold so many MP3 players with non-replaceable batteries is still beyond me.

The video playback says 15fps in the documentation, but someone on the Rockbox forums copied a converted DivX movie back over to his computer and found out it is actually 25fps QT movie. I think some formats convert to 15fps, so SanDisk stuck with the lowest to avoid false advertising.

Just one bug that I've found, sometimes it doesn't turn on. Simply hold the power button for 20 sec (I count out 25 to be safe), let go, then hit the power button again and it will turn on.

SanDisk also let me know that an FM transmitter and New Battery will be available sometime in July/August.

lol @ the scratched Nano pic.

[scott @ Jul 11th 2006 1:12PM]

osx users are a small (but growing) and important segment of the dap market, imho. ignoring them seems like a big mistake. same holds true for the millions of people who have purchased songs off the itms, or who simply choose to rip their music to an aac file. how many people are going to want to burn the aac music to a cd only to then convert it to mp3 so it can play on this device? if i have thousands of songs in aac format, and use osx, why would i even consider this player?

[teo @ Jul 11th 2006 1:22PM]

that the 'mistaken picture' that the "eagle-eyed editors" found happens on each of the 360 picture views cannot be a mistake. They clearly want the public to get involved (and engadget too) to generate interest. (Unlike Paramount who refuses free advertising for an upcoming movie.)

[teo @ Jul 11th 2006 1:25PM]

Here's the link for the paramount story: http://www.adrants.com/2006/07/paramount-buffoons-kill-movies-free-publi.php

[E @ Jul 11th 2006 1:41PM]

It does work with the MAC and Linux. There are several Mac users in the Sansa forums discussing using thier e200s on the mac.

What someone who owns a Mac didnt buy an ipod? Its true...

http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum/showthread.php?t=944

[PeteC @ Jul 11th 2006 1:41PM]

Liked the look of the sansa a lot more but had to go for a Samsung Z5 as it's the only $GB flash out there with OGG support.

[pableu @ Jul 11th 2006 1:43PM]

Scott: The Sandisk Sansa sold can be used as an UMS device, so copying music onto the device is just like copying files on a USB-stick. Works with Windows, OS X und Linux.

That's at least the case with the units sold over here in europe, but I guess it applies worldwide.

[Graham H. @ Jul 11th 2006 2:22PM]

anyone notice the 6gb e270 isn't on the site anymore? hm. don't forget how awesome the user-expandable memory is. i have not been this satisfied with a dap since my rio carbon (rest its soul) and my ipod-using friends are still able to figure the sansa out, which is a boon.

[Silver R. Wolfe @ Jul 11th 2006 2:40PM]

If it doesn't have support for OSX, those OSX users can dual-boot into Windows XP if need be and just access it that way.

[bliss @ Jul 11th 2006 8:38PM]

high time that sansa added some more memory meat...

[sracer @ Jul 11th 2006 8:40PM]

The Sansa e200 series players still have a ways to go. First, the scroll wheel is SO bright that it is capable of fully lighting up a totally dark 10x12 room. There is no way to disable/modify the brightness of the scroll wheel light.

There is also no "official" AC Adapter/charger for them. You have to either use a PC to charge the player, buy a "universal" charger on ebay from a shady character, or buy a powered USB hub.

There's no sleep timer.

Video encoding is a pig. Out of the box, the software will encode videos that weigh in at 10MB/min. If you tweak the control file, you can reduce that to 6MB.

If you want photos to display in landscape mode (most images), then you have to "pre-rotate" them with your desktop software before converting the images.

I like my e250, I really do, but I wouldn't shell out the big bucks for the higher capacity players.

[bitshitter @ Jul 11th 2006 10:46PM]

the photo of the 8GB Sansa's UI that was originally shown at anythingbutipod indicated an as-yet-to-be-released firmware version. Maybe this 8GB Sansa will bring along some improvements to the previous UI, such as a user-customizable EQ. I have the 4GB e260 Sansa, but if this comes out at around $280, I'm definitely upgrading!!

[Sam K @ Jul 12th 2006 10:14AM]

Sandisk currently offers microSD (i.e. transflash) memory cards up to 1gb but the following link on PhoneScoop.com shows a pic of the Motorola Capri with a 2gb microSD card so we should be seeing them soon.

http://www.phonescoop.com/articles/moto_capri/index.php?p=3130&g=connect&h=p1060482_clean

So this could end up with a total capacity of 10gb.

[Tim UF @ Jul 12th 2006 11:09AM]

will the sansa e2xx series be capable of handling the 2gb transflash?
or am i old school enough to remember when computers couldnt handle 'large' hard drives, which required partitioning in 2gb portions... back in the windows 3.1 or windows 95 days...

[Archit @ Jan 12th 2007 4:28AM]

for all the mac users who use iTunes and have the Sansa e series music player, I just spent last few days writing scripts to sync this player with iTunes.

I did a lot of testing and seems to work just fine to me. But if you guys come across anything do let me know.

http://www.ridesforall.com/archit/sansaitunes/index.html

enjoy!!

- Archit

[Danny @ Apr 20th 2007 10:37PM]

I'm waiting for mine too!