Gone are the days when music players could store only music and people had to attain other devices capable of storing pictures, as well as videos. No longer are music lovers listening to music on outdated CD players; they have evolved into more user-friendly and portable lightweight materials, such as: MP3 players and iPods. These are not as cumbersome as their predecessors and they combine the joy of listening to music, watching videos and looking at pictures all in one tiny package. The Sansa e250 is quite adept at doing all of this.

What's Hot: It's easy to navigate, using the tactile wheel. Has a strong alloy casing which provides scratch resistance and possesses great features for its users, such as: FM tuner/recorder, voice recording and photo and video playback.

What's Not: No AC adapter, the buttons surrounding the Sansa's scroll wheel can be difficult to press and low levels of system noise can be heard through head phones at low or zero volume.

Design

The design for this device resembles the iPod; this is not necessarily a bad thing as it makes carrying it easy and manoeuvring it is much more comfortable than its cumbersome predecessor, the CD player. Although it resembles an iPod, I would have loved to see designers integrate another look, instead of using the ever-popular iPod look, though still maintaining its lightweight capability. Nevertheless, the device is sturdy and sharp looking. It features a 1.8-inch screen in comparison to an iPod Nano that features a 1.5-inch screen. The power button on the device takes you to the main menu and another press takes you back to whatever menu you were last in, so there is no difficult navigation as with the iPod. On the spine, there is also a voice-recording button, which when pressed, instantaneously begins recording.

Performance

In terms of the audio performance for this machine, picky listeners will find that there is some system noise. In comparison to previous series, such as the m200 and the e100, the physical build is more appealing in terms of its beauty. The machine may also be powerful enough to rival even that of the iPod in certain areas. However, viewing videos and pictures is nothing necessarily outstanding. Though the screen is bright, photo viewing usually ends up being cropped with black borders because of the screen ratio. Overall, the performance is quite good.

Specifications

Here are a few specifications from the Sansa:

• Memory type: flash memory
• Memory capacity: 2GB
• Song capacity: Up to 500
• Battery life: 20 hours
• Colour: Black
• Supported audio format: WMA, MP3
• Operating system requirements: Windows, Windows XP
• Memory-card slot: microSD

Bottomline

Overall, the Sansa e250 is a great music device in the e200 series. It has a sleek design and offers a user-friendly interface, as well as a number of features from which to choose. Though there are a few problems in the audio, video and photo options, there are a number of other high points which outweigh these negatives, and they may not deter too much from the enjoyment of the device. The Sansa e250 deserves a four out of five.