Hands-on with the Sandisk Sansa Connect

At this point, WiFi-equipped DAPs aren't completely novel, but they're still novel enough to command a good deal of attention -- especially when they're coming from companies like Sandisk through collaborations with Zing. In fact, the $249 Sansa Connect bears a truly striking resemblance (both physically and in user experience) to the reference device Zing was showing off last year -- much more so than its distant cousin from the same Zing drafting board, Sirius' Stiletto. Though the Sansa Connect obiviously loses the Stiletto's satellite radio capabilites, it dominates the Stiletto (and the Zune, for that matter) in its effective use of 802.11 airwaves. Why most manufacturers have yet to pick up on the WiFi formula for this class of devices, we don't understand, but hey folks, it's easy: give us streaming, easy PC-free downloading, and firmware updates over the air. We're all awash in hotspots at this point, so let's take full advantage, yeah? The Connect is tied to Yahoo! Music Unlimited for its subscription download model and streaming radio, and we've gotta say, a WiFi DAP really brings the model into its own. It almost trivializes the need for serious storage in the device -- this one makes do with 4GB plus microSD expansion -- because you can get literally any music in Yahoo's catalog whenever you have a data connection handy. All of Yahoo's features carry over, too: ratings can be saved from the Connect, album art is downloaded in real time, and you've even got Messenger on here. All of LAUNCHcast's stations are available to stream, and of course, you can build your own station based on personal tastes. And for users of other services that employ secure WMA, rest easy: you'll be able to pull your songs into Yahoo Music Jukebox (or, if you subscribe to Unlimited, just grab the song again if you're so inclined). We tested this with URGE and it worked like a champ.

Gallery: Hands-on with the Sandisk Sansa Connect

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On to more superficial matters, we were pretty delighted with the Connect's size, appearance, and gorgeous QVGA display; the integrated speaker is a cute trick and the interface was, by and large, easy to navigate and understand. The scroll wheel has a slightly nicer feeling to it (in our most humble of opinions) than the Stiletto's, and the buttons have decent spacing and feel. The device wasn't without its fair share of gotchas, though. For example, dynamic menus for choices involving live data from Yahoo! Music (recommended tracks, for example) would occasionally require two presses to actuate where they should've required one. The first press would cause the display to say "Updating" -- fair enough, it's gotta grab new data from the 'nets -- but after it would update, it'd take us back to the same menu again and the second press would get us going. Hey, whatever, that's what software updates are for, and since they're automatically pushed over WiFi, we're not going to worry about it too much.

We're disappointed that the Connect isn't a little more open than it is; we'd like to be able to stream whatever the heck we want for starters, but Yahoo! Music Unlimited and LAUNCHcast aren't bad starts. Now the trick is to keep up the WiFi momentum for these things -- Apple, Creative, iRiver, Archos, we're looking straight at you!

[BIG oG @ Apr 6th 2007 11:30PM]

Internet Radio!, Ipod has nothin on this bad boy

[ark_v2 @ Apr 6th 2007 11:44PM]

SanDisk love, I'm getting this for sure!

[Mrfreezie @ Apr 6th 2007 11:53PM]

Holy wall of text, Batman!

[Marcus @ Apr 7th 2007 12:18AM]

Finally a DAP I'm impressed with! Wifi is actually being taken advantage of, and this player looks awesome too! I think I'd actually consider letting this replace my Cowon iAudio... Good job Sandisk!

[Tom @ Apr 7th 2007 12:20AM]

This excels where the zune fails

[Leoedin @ Apr 7th 2007 11:51AM]

I don't know why this is low ranked. Sure, the Zune is a different class of DAP, but this device makes use of wifi in a clever way. If it can sync via wifi then it does everything the zune should of.

The main thing it doesn't do is share songs, but until some sort of universally accepted method of song share is developed, then that's pretty useless. (lets face it, how many people are going to buy this?)

[Irfan @ Apr 7th 2007 1:19AM]

can you sync via wifi-lan with this? i leave my player in my car and it would be nice if it synced up each morning without me having to take the thing out of my car

[Bloobie @ Apr 7th 2007 2:16AM]

No, it requires you to sync over USB.

[z1g1 @ Apr 7th 2007 1:55AM]

Does anyone know how the Wi-Fi log on works. I would love to use the Wi-Fi on this player but every access point i use has some kind of protection, WEP, WAP, user name, password, any advice would be helpful

[Bloobie @ Apr 7th 2007 2:16AM]

This device, according to Sansa's website, requires an open WiFi network. You're out of luck if you have a WPA/WEP-secured network.

[Luck Kanthatham @ Apr 7th 2007 3:28AM]

Bloobie, the device does work over a WPA/WEP-secured network. I do have WPA-secured network and it can connect to it with no problem. The only down side, as I mentioned in my review, is that you have to use the thumbwheel to scroll through a 1-line display of characters to enter the password. It took me about 1 minute or so to "key" in the password.

[greg @ Apr 7th 2007 3:18AM]

I can't wait to see someone crack this bad boy open and get linux running

[Nishu @ Apr 7th 2007 3:21AM]

Great minds think alike. collaboration has come out with a worthy Sansa connect offering matchless connectivity.

[guj_* @ Apr 7th 2007 9:41AM]

Is it possible to check your Yahoo email account?

[spice3d @ Apr 7th 2007 3:09PM]

I didn't like it and returned this morning. If you aren't using Yahoo music, you are playing too much for the other WiFi abilities. Also, the way you have to select and download the songs as one procedure and then play them as if you loaded them normally is clunky. You should be able to just select and play a streaming song. Rhapsody on the Nokia N800 does this and it rocks.

Other dislikes:
-It also uses a proprietary connector on the unit so you can't just use a standard mini-USB cable--just another funky cable to carryaround if ya need to charge it.
-The scrollwheel is too sensitive.
-Kinda large

Don't get me wrong, it's a nice device and if you want to use Yahoo music, it's the one to get. However, although it works with other PlaysForSure services (eg Napster)--like a normal player via cable, the premium you pay for WiFi is too much.

[PenaltyKillah @ Apr 7th 2007 3:41PM]

Still annoyed about the 4GB size. It's definitely the devolution of portable media storage... Anyway, Creative should be on the chopping block by now. It's one of the few manufacturers that hasn't produced something WiFi associated.

[Rodney L. @ Apr 7th 2007 4:32PM]

So battery life, any word on that? That could be important what with wifi and all.

[carl @ Apr 7th 2007 4:41PM]

I use yahoo music and like it, and this idea is very attractive. I've been hoping for a wireless feature like this for a long time. 4GB is very little capacity though, it would be nice if they took out the integrated speaker to make room for SDHC slot instead of MicroSD. MicroSD maxes out at 2GB right now iirc, while SDHC is at 8GB with 16GB coming soon. Expanding this thing to 20GB would be awesome. Another thing I don't like is the proprietary sync cable. Mini USB or nothing... And what's the battery life here?

I still like the Cowon D2 (4GB on board + SDHC slot, 50+ hours battery life, but no wireless) for diminutive DAPs.

[nikster @ Apr 7th 2007 9:28PM]

sadly, WiFi is not everywhere, not even close. take it from an internet junkie who takes his laptop everywhere.

somehow carrying this thing around with me in my house in order to use Yahoo music has zero appeal to me.

i would much rather slap my 50GB of music on a HD based player and carry it with me everywhere. no fiddling around, no subscribing, no loading music no nothing - just enjoying my music wherever and whenever i want. so thanks but no thanks.

[wirelessdj @ Apr 8th 2007 8:52AM]

*** STOP AND READ ***

I bought one too and love this thing but found one real big FLAW: I found that you can not charge the unit while playing! It will only charge when the unit is OFF. This means it will not allow you to plug it and listen all day without the battery running out. I had it plugged into the ac adapter and watched the batter drain down to ZERO. When I turned it off, it started to charge again. Can you please confirm this? Hopefully I have a bad unit?

[Eddie Yasi @ Apr 8th 2007 2:55PM]

I just got one yesterday, and it charged fine while I had it on and was using it. Are you sure you had it on a fully powered USB connection, as opposed to say one on a keyboard or monitor or such that might not be fully powered?

A couple other notes: On battery life: I charged mine fully, and then listened to internet radio constantly for about 4 hours, and I was also frequently making requests to download the song I was listening to. It still had about a quarter charge left. I imagine battery life would be even longer if I were only listening to songs already on the player.

I highly recommend that anyone using Yahoo Music Unlimited take the time to rate as many songs/artists/album as possible, and more importantly make your own custom radio stations via Yahoo music jukebox under 'My stations and moods', because those too can be played from the Connect, and I found that it was much more likely to stream new content I liked when I was playing my custom station vs one of their standard ones.

One quibble: I didn't see an option to enter an artist/song/album name and download it wirelessly from YME. The only wireless download options were based on existing playlists or based on songs playing on Launchcast. But, overall I'm loving it and am very happy with my purchase!

[u @ Apr 8th 2007 6:58PM]

I have yet to get my sansa connect connected as an MTP device.

Yesterday it would download music, pictures etc. through wifi but would not play. Today it will play.

Some environmental things shifted which could explain the playback recovery (i dropped my wifi encryption from 128 to 64, unplugged an airport express) but i suspect it may have been a DRM license retrieval issue.

Here are first observations using a 30 day free Yahoo Music trial with only wifi connectivity...

- There is no way to search music from the device.

- Playlist download is static. Playlists don't synchronize/update after the initial download.

- You can not create (or upload) playlists on the device.

- There seems to be a significant latency between YM Jukebox playlist creation and playlist availability to the device

- Musicnet session ping pongs between client and device, device wins.

- Can not use flickr photos as background. No theming options are available.

- I am experiencing cyclical MTP driver install issues on 2 boxs and have been unable to resolve with MTP|WMP downgrade|upgrade.

I'm curious to see how it will handle DRM licensing across multiple subscription services.

In general the device feels very slick. I think i will be a fan after i get the MTP issue resolved.

[Scott @ Apr 9th 2007 1:20PM]

Hey u,

I worked on the device, and in regards to your comments such as not being able to search from the device...we have plans to add more features in upcoming firmware updates, which can be pushed out to the devices while they're connected to WiFi. We actually had to hold back on some features in order to have more time for testing and making the current firmware stable.

Keep an eye out for updates.

[u @ Apr 9th 2007 2:57PM]

Thanks Scott,

I am very impressed with how stable the software is. Congratulations to you and your development team. I definitely consider this one of my favorite playsforsure devices, and i would highly recommend it to any existing yahoo music customer.

I am looking forward to seeing future features and improvements. My #1 request/desire would be for a more seamless playlist synchronization experience. Better yet would be library synchronization, but i realize remote music libraries are not part of the yahoo music world yet.

Out of curiosity is there an open API for integrating music stores into the sansa connect?

[ian c rogers @ Apr 9th 2007 1:02AM]

Here is the official post on this topic from Yahoo! Music Blog:

http://ymusicblog.com/blog/2007/04/09/wifi-enabled-sandisk-sansa-connect-features-yahoo-music-unlimited-launchcast-messenger-and-flickr/

BTW, mine charges while it's playing just fine...

ian

[wirelessdj @ Apr 9th 2007 7:47AM]

Here is what I found. If you plug the AC adapter (included with player) in and use the wifi streaming radio for hours -- the battery evenually depletes even though the icon shows the little lightning bolt is charging. It does NOT do this when playing back MP3's Can you check this for me?

I may have a bad cord, or bad unit or maybe my wifi router is sucking the power out ;-). I want to be able to bring it to work, and leave the wifi streaming all day without killing the battery (so I can listen to it on the way home)

[angryshepard-em @ Apr 9th 2007 4:25PM]

Finally, a Yahoo Music player for us Mac users. I mean, considering that it doesn't seem to even need a PC.

As far as that goes, I assume it will play mp3s on the microSD card that come from say, iTunes on my Mac? If I plug the USB drive into my Mac, does it show up as a drive?

If I can use mp3s from my Mac and WMAs from the ether, I'll buy one this weekend.

[Morgan @ Apr 9th 2007 5:53PM]

Someone crack theirs open so I can see if I can update the storage!

[angryshepard-em @ Apr 10th 2007 2:34PM]

Morgan - It uses microSD cards - you can get 2GB for under $100. Why would you need to crack it open?

[wirelessdj @ Apr 9th 2007 7:09PM]

SCOTT, why can't copy files to the device using windows explorer? I don't want to always have to use the yahoo software just to put files anything on the card/internal storage

[Scott @ Apr 11th 2007 12:17PM]

u: I can't comment on the API for other music stores at this time. Perhaps in the future?

wirelessdj: The device will show up as an MTP device when you plug it into your PC. So, you shouldn't have to use YMJ specifically. WMP or other programs which support MTP should recognize it as well. Besides that, it does indeed show up as a separate drive, which you can drag music to (into the "Music" folder).

[wirelessdj @ Apr 11th 2007 6:08PM]

Ah, So you can only drag to the 'Music' folder. I tried dragging files to the root. It let me create a folder but I could not copy files.

BY THE WAY, all of the sudden it is not draining the battery any more when plugged in. It fixed itself, I am happy with this and may dump my Sat Radio subscription!!

[Thor @ Apr 10th 2007 2:16PM]

So what's the battery life on this thing while using wi-fi streaming?

[Thor @ Apr 10th 2007 3:03PM]

Sorry, ignore my question on battery life. I just saw someone answered it already.

[angryshepard-em @ Apr 11th 2007 1:17PM]

How far off are Podcasts? I assume the current YME podcast plugin only downloads the podcasts to the client machine it's installed on. Any plans to change this? (Imho, getting podcasts without having to sync up would be awesome.)

[Travis @ Apr 11th 2007 2:59PM]

First of all, this device is great! The available features and Wifi works wonderfully so far.

My only gripe (besides being 250 for 4G)....why can't you search for music?? I have an 80GB iPod and a Harman Kardin Drive and Play....I would ditch this all for the luxury of sitting on my couch or at a coffee shop with this ability.

I'm hoping there is a firmware upgrade like mentioned above....else, this puppy is going back to the store.

Travis

[Jeff @ Apr 11th 2007 5:51PM]

Something I haven't seen brought up regarding the internet radio support with the Sansa Connect is if you can play any shoutcast audio stream that you choose. Can anyone confirm if this is possible with the Sansa Connect? If this isn't supported, I think it would be a huge disappointment. Also, considering that the device will play WMA files, can it also play windows media audio streams online?

[Darryl Pomicter @ Apr 24th 2007 10:33AM]

The ZING engine is hot—mobile, Wi-Fi, and streaming!

But, in addition to limited, paid 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.

[Govind @ May 24th 2007 11:04AM]

Hi, I am looking for a media player device which can sync media (audio music) via WiFi. If any body come across this kind of device please email me. I would be very greatful to them.

[NinjaMom @ Jun 7th 2007 12:24PM]

I am having issues using the Sansa Connect. I think there may be a short in my cable or something, because sometimes it is recognized by my computer and my Napster account and sometimes it isn't.

I have a love/hate relationship going on with this thing right now.

[Dave Clark @ Jun 18th 2007 11:35AM]

Interesting; this morning I connected my Sansa Connect, and it's no longer recognized by my PC. Not having any problem with any other USB device on the same port. Huh?

[Wesley P @ Dec 25th 2007 7:06PM]

I am having the same problem. It does NOT show up in "My Computer" nor does it want to show on Sansa Media Converter. It makes the dinging sound like it is being registered, but then nothing happens. Anyone have a solution???? All other devices to USB port work and i have reinstalled all drivers and updates.

[Michael @ Dec 28th 2007 12:41PM]

I had the same problem with the Connect not showing up on my Rhapsody. I called SanDisk support and they were very helpful. I had to reset the Connect to factory settings which erased everything I had. Fortunately I have only had it since Dec.25 so there was not much on there. Make sure you never disconnect during a song transfer.

[Don @ Jan 7th 2008 9:21AM]

I have the same problem in my computer, Dell Dimension 310 recogizing the device. I have spent 6 hours using Sansa and Dell support and it still is not connected to the computer. Any solutions?

[Kathy @ Feb 17th 2008 2:21AM]

I just got my Connect a few days ago, I am having the same problem as far as my pc not recognizing my connect. I have reset my connect to facotory settings and it started working just fine again. But now it is back on the fritz again. My pc will not recognize it and when its plugged in my pc starts slowing down and trying to freeze up. As soon as I unplug my connect it is fine again. Anyone have any ideas? Please help I'm getting very aggrivated.

[Yair Bar-On @ Feb 21st 2008 11:34AM]

I had the same problem where my Sandisk Sansa Clip was dinging when connected to my XP laptop but didn't show up in my computer.
I found the solution here:
http://www.ybo-interactive.com/blog/2008/02/21/sandisk-sansa-usb-problems/

[Scott @ Jul 9th 2008 10:01PM]

Sansa connect SUCKS! I got one and it won't let me transfer files to it. It just keeps saying "synchronizing" and never changes. I've tried it on three computers. Here are some other problems:
1.It goes into standby, not off, when you press the power button- that means that it uses up battery power. If you turn it all the way off to save battery power, you have to wait for 1 minute for it to go through a stupid boot up screen! This is completely unnecessary- most MP3 players can be instantly turned on and off!!! What a piece of *$$%!!!
2. Slow and clunky menu system
3. Proprietary connector.
4. Slow
5. Don't buy it, it sucks. Trust me, save your money and get another brand like Creative or Apple, this is a piece of JUNK!!!

[chris @ Oct 6th 2008 9:40PM]

I do not agree with you, Creative is truly a piece of crap, and apple is even worse, and I'm not having any problems with mine, I've been enjoying it since the day I bought it.