SanDisk Sansa M260 4GB MP3 Player (Blue)
- Compact digital audio player with 4 GB flash memory and MP3/WMA support
- Stores 64 hours of MP3 music or 128 hours of WMA music; integrated voice recorder
- Supports PlaysForSure WMA subscription services; built-in FM tuner with 20 presets
- High-speed USB 2.0 interface; includes carrying case with armband for portable use
- Runs for 19 hours on 1 AAA battery (included); 1-year warranty
Product Description
The Sansa m200 Series MP3 players offer great sound, ease of use, and high quality sound with virtually no weight. Created by the leaders in flash memory, this flash-based model provides high-quality digital music playback at an affordable price. As a replacement to our original Digital Audio Player line, this improved look also includes Sansa's excellent navigation: songs sorted by title, artist, album, genre and more. The Sansa m200 Series MP3 players are the first to provide Microsoft PlaysForSure Subscription Service for unlimited downloads. Choose to play your favorite track repeatedly, in random sequence, or play all the songs continuously Hi-speed USB 2.0 connects to almost any computer for hi-speed music transfer (backwards compatible to USB 1.1 ports) Comes with sleek carrying case and armband to protect your player and keep your hands free Easy to use - plug and play, no drivers required (except Win98SE requires driver) Indigo backlit LCD provides ID3 Tag information (v.1 and 2)
Amazon.com Product Description
Take your music on the go with the feather-light SanDisk Sansa M260 4 GB flash memory digital audio player, which is bulked up with a surprising amount of features for such a small device. In addition to playing both MP3 and WMA audio files, it also sports an FM radio and digital voice recorder. It supports the Microsoft Windows Media Player 10 and features PlaysForSure support for portable music downloads. And it's powered by a single AAA battery, which will provide up to 19 hours of battery life. 
The Sansa M260 can hold 64 hours of CD-quality MP3 tracks on its 4 GB memory. View larger. Detailed view of the basic controls. | The 4 GB Sansa M260 will hold approximately 64 hours of CD-quality MP3 tracks (encoded at 128kps) or 128 hours of WMA tracks (at 64kbps). It's compatible with MP3, WMA, secure WMA, and Audible audio file formats. The digital FM radio allows you to access local radio stations, as well as preset up to 20 of your favorite stations. With five equalizer types for the FM radio and music player, you can optimize your sound for your favorite style of music, such as, Rock, Jazz, Classical, Pop, and Custom (user-defined). You can also use the built-in microphone and voice recording function to capture interviews, classes, and short voice notes to yourself. The compact yet robust industrial design offers an easy-to-use interface with an indigo-backlit LCD screen showing ID3 tag information from currently playing tracks (song title, artist, and album, as well as battery level and playlist). Sophisticated music library sorting lets you browse the music in your player by artist, album, song title, genre, year, playlist, and other useful criteria. The AB playback feature allows you to select a start point and an end point within an audio file so you can play that segment over and over--helpful for learning languages. It's easy to transfer songs to the Sansa--just connect it to your PC via the included USB 2.0 connection cable, where it will appear as a Windows Portable Device on your computer. Then, just drag and drop music files from anywhere on your hard drive or use a variety of music software to move licensed music to the device. The Sansa is compatible with PCs running the Windows XP operating system. The SanDisk Sansa M260 digital audio player uses PlaysForSure technology. Look for the PlaysForSure logo if you're shopping for a portable music or video device and you want to make sure the digital music and video you purchase will play back on it every time. Match the PlaysForSure logo on a large selection of leading devices and online music stores. If you see the logo, you'll know your digital music will play for sure. Choose from a large number of digital music and video stores, including MTV's Urge, Rhapsody, Yahoo!, MSN Music, MusicMatch, MusicNow, Napster, Wal-Mart Music Downloads, and many more.
What's in the Box
Sansa M260 4 GB MB player, carrying case with armband, stereo headphones, AAA alkaline battery, USB 2.0 travel cable, CD-ROM with drivers and online user guide, and printed Quick Start guide
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SanDisk Sansa M260 4GB MP3 Player (Blue)
- Electronics: 0 pages
- Publisher: SanDisk
- Label: SanDisk
- Studio: SanDisk
- Average Customer Review:
 based on 33 reviews
- Sales Rank in Electronics: #9527
Click on Product Listings for Details!
Avg. Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating: 
Summary: The Ideal "Basic" mp3/wma Music Player 2008-11-30
Comment: Here's my bottom line: If you're new to mp3 players and you just want a gadget to store and play your favorite music without a big hullabaloo, any of the models in the SanDisk m200 series would be a great toy for you.
OK, so it's not the coolest looking player on the block and there aren't hundreds of accessories you can buy for it, but in many ways, the SanDisk m240/m250/m260 is the king of them all.
First off, being able to drag-and-drop mp3's or wma's into it as if you were using a regular usb thumb drive eliminates a lot of the techno-stress involved with using an iPod. If you have any kind of software for ripping CDs to mp3 files, just store them in a folder on your computer and copy them onto your SanDisk (using the included USB cable) as you please. No need to use the "Synchronize to Portable Device" features in Windows Media or iTunes.
Then, for playback, just decide if you want the songs to play in any specific order or if you want to just shuffle everything up and let the device surprise you with what it chooses to play. See that? Listening to music doesn't have to be so complicated!
Perhaps my favorite feature of the SanDisk, though, is its use of a standard AAA battery. I get about 16 hours out of a regular one and 14 hours out of a rechargeable. And I will never have to ship my SanDisk back to the factory for a battery replacement.
I own two SanDisks -- an m240 1gb and an m260 4gb. I use the m240 for family parties and for street fairs in my town (I am the go-to guy for any community event that needs music), and I have the m260 and a powered speaker mounted to my bicycle for long rides. People are always blown away by how incredible the m240 sounds through a professional sound system.
Yes, I've seen a few reviews by people who have had an absolutely miserable time with these things, but mine have been virtually trouble-free and I could not live without either one.
My music collection is huge, spanning the 1920s right up to last week's Top Ten. Still, the entire collection is less than 15gb in mp3 format at a 128k sampling rate. My m260 has about 1,000 songs on it...more than I need to last a whole summer. Whenever I need to freshen up the mix, I simply plug the device into my computer and swap out a few hundred songs or so. If you're a ratpacker with your music and you don't like to leave any of it at home on your hard drive, you may want to look into a model with more memory. But, if you're an average guy like myself and you're not looking to store every episode of Family Guy and all the photos from your 2008 weekend in Cancun ON TOP OF your favorite music, you should seriously consider one of the SanDisk m200 series players.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Overpriced compared to the m250 2008-05-02
Comment: Now that the m250(2GB) player is so cheap, it doesn't make sense to pay almost 200 dollars for this unit.
Don't get me wrong, i love the player, and nothing beats the long lasting battery life, and utilizing a single AAA battery is its best feature if you ask me.
BUT you can get 10 m250's for the price of ONE m260 right now..
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Love this brand! 2008-01-07
Comment: I have had a 2GB Sansa for a couple of years now and love it. It is easy to use and holds a great number of songs. This Christmas I decided to get one for each of my parents (a 4GB and a 1GB) and they are both thrilled with theirs. Though it is not considered to be the "coolest" brand or model, I would continue to buy SanDisk products before any other. They are combatible with many different types of music files and digital books. This brand provides a high quality, easy to use mp3 player available in many different formats!
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating: 
Summary: A good value, but overall a mediocre player 2007-11-11
Comment: I've owned this mp3 player for almost 2 years. At the time of my original purchase, this was pretty good player given it's price/capacity/size. Today, given the strong competition out there and this Sansa's many flaws I'll detail below, I'd recommend most people look for a different mp3 player.
Pros:
- Small/Light/Flashbased: The #1 reason I bought this player.... the physical size of this unit and it's solid state flash memory are perfect for runners. I strap it to my arm and hardly know it's there. The included elastic armband and clear plastic case work fine for running and gym use. Yes, the plastic case is cheap and not likely to withstand rough use or repeated trips in and out of tight fitting jean pockets. But this freebie is good for keeping light rain and sweat off the unit.
- Capacity: This model is 4GBs... certainly not huge but MORE than enough for exercising and about just right for normal daily listening. I typically use both MP3 and WMA's encoded using VBR 128 / 96 respectively and my player easily holds 30+ FULL albums. At this bitrate the music isn't anywhere near CD quality, but it's good enough for when I'm out-and-about. With 4GB's, I can go weeks before feeling the need to rotate new music onto my player.
-Backlighted display: The display has a nice blue backlight that allows operation in the dark. It's not fancy but it's very functional and allows me to operate the unit during early morning runs or in the car at night. The backlight duration is adjustable and can be turned off completely to save battery power.
-Uses 1 AAA Battery: Some people might consider this a CON. For me, this was the #2 reason why I chose this unit. When I go on vacation, I travel on a sportbike, sleep in a tent, and hike a lot. I don't generally have access to electricity, nor do I carry a Laptop which many of today's MP3 players rely upon for recharging via USB. This Sansa allows me to take a handful of AAA's and just go without worry. When I'm not traveling, in order to save money and be environmentally conscious, I use 850mAh NiMH rechargeable batteries. The rechargeables only last about 6-7 hrs, a little over 1/2 the runtime a normal alkaline battery provides, but who cares? They're rechargeable! I just pop another one in. One NiMH easily gets me through a workday.
Windows Media Player or straight Drag-and-Drop for music management: In MTP mode, the unit utilizes WMP for music library mgmt and syncing. Personally, I like WMP. It's fast, has a small memory footprint, and doesn't have processes that continue running memory resident even after I exit the application like iTunes. I like WMP. You may not. If not, you can set the Sansa to mass storage mode and just drag and drop files onto the unit. It's your choice.
Auto-Bookmarking function: If you power down the unit while it's playing or PAUSE the unit and allow it to automatically power down after X number of minutes of inactivity, upon start-up the M260 will automatically resume playing from where it left off. This is a must have feature for audiobook and podcast listeners becausing fast forwarding though huge .mp3 files is a pain.
Cons:
Poor Sound Qlty: OK 1st off, this is not an audiophile product nor is it meant to be. Also everyone knows sound quality is only as good as the source material so low quality encodes = poor sound. But regardless, this Sansa like other SanDisk players I've used has "relatively" poor sound. Specifically, bass and mid-bass are really poor and neither the custom EQ nor the handful of sound Presets (rock/jazz/etc...) do anything to improve the sound. Actually, the presets make things worse! Don't get me wrong, this player is NOT unlistenable OK! It won't make your ears bleed :) It's just not a GREAT sounding player compared to other brands, even those considered to have middling sound qlty like the iPod Video and iPod Shuffle in particular. Even my cheap and outdated Creative C100 Sport sounds much better... deeper and tighter bass, fuller mid-range and clearer highs. Plus the Creative's EQ is actually practical unlike my Sansa. In order to get ANY KIND OF ACCEPTABLE bass out of this Sansa, you need to buy headphones that WAY OVER EMPHASIZE BASS. I've found some inexpensive JVC headphone at Wally World that do just this. These headphone sound terrible with a normal mp3 - way too bass heavy & boomy. But paired with my Sansa, these earbuds fill in the low-end hole of the M260's audio spectrum.
Poor software/firmware expertise: As a software developer myself, I'm rather shocked at SanDisk's level of technical expertise, or lack there-of. This is a multi-million (billion?) dollar company! Do these people understand the concept of Software Quality Assurance Testing??? I recently applied their newest firmware, hoping it would fix the music shuffle problem, and had disastrous results. The good news is that my player still "plays" music. The bad news is that the display is totally hosed. As you skip through music, the ID3 tag info like Artist/Title from the previous song is not erased from the LCD display before the next song's data is displayed. In other words, the display just continues to transpose song data on top of the previous song's data. The display becomes unreadable... it looks like the Klingon alphabet!
Now Sandisk tells you NOT to update the firmware unless you are experiencing a problem that's addressed in the new firmware... some might even say, "well you did the update, so it's your fault" I say total B.S!! I'm a developer. I actually TEST MY CODE before releasing it to the general public! Also when I release code, I perform a little thing called Documentation in order to explain exactly what my code is doing. SanDisk doesn't provide release notes with it's new firmware updates so there's no way to determine what problems/fixes are being addressed. Oh, and their auto firmware installer is a horrid piece of software that automatically loads on boot-up and runs continuously in the background monitoring for new firmware updates. The biggest problem is that the firmware updater seems to interfere with the m260's ability to sync with WMP! You have to uninstall the firmware updater application to get syncing to work again! This brings up the question of why a firmware updater needs to run 24x7 in the first place - especially if SanDisk says don't update unless you need to? Me thinks they're sending mixed messages!
Music Shuffle doesn't Shuffle: This unit has a "shuffle" feature but it doesn't do anything. If you activate Shuffle and select PLAY ALL, the unit will play Songs X, Y, Z. If you turn off the unit, turn it back on, reactive Shuffle, and select PLAY ALL, the M260 will play the same songs, X, Y, Z in the exact same order. What's the point? I was hoping the new firmware would fix this... well we know how that turned out!
- Doesn't play songs in Album order, uses Alpha Order instead: This is a huge problem if you listen to Ebooks, podcasts, or are the type of person who enjoys listening to music in album order. This Sansa does not obey the ID3 tag for TRACK #. Instead it plays all music alphabetically by title. This is beyond annoying if you listen to audio books or podcasts... You'll have to go in and rename all your files alphabetically like "Chaper_01-01.mp3, Chapter_01-02.mp3, Chapter_01-03.mp3" instead of relying on the ID3 Track# tag. I have ebooks that are made up of hundreds of MP3 and this renaming is a royal pain in the a$$.
Random Lockups / Crazy Static sounds - Now this is NOT a huge problem. It happens infrequently, maybe 10 times in 2 years. But it's still not very assuring. A solid state piece of equipment should not randomly lockup. Also on a few occasions the unit just starts putting out static laced music and really low audio volumes for no reason. The rectify either problem, you simply have to pop out the AAA battery and restart the thing. Takes like 5 seconds. With players without removable batteries, I've read these types of issues can be terminal. Again, not a game stopper by any means, but just one more negative issue a "modern" mp3 player should not have!
Windows Media Player: In general, WMP works just fine as a syncing/music manager. But occasionally, it does not recognize the Sansa upon plugging in the USB adapter. You then have to go through the process of unplugging, waiting, re-plugging, waiting.... with the Sansa until WMP recognizes the unit. Again, this doesn't happen very often... maybe I'll have an issue 5% of the time. But still, 5% of the time is still NOT GOOD ENOUGH for a piece of consumer electronics gear. CE gear should work 100% of the time.
Flimsy battery cover: I'm not a huge stickler for build quality. I don't require my things be made out of aircraft aluminum or titanium for me to be happy. As long as something is constructed fairly solid I'm good. That said, the battery cover on the M260 is definitely CHEAP. It has 2 TINY plastic points on one end that act as a hinge. The other end has a really weak plastic clip that holds the battery cover on. If you are not an extremely careful person like myself, I can easily see you breaking the plastic points or clip off the cover. Even just putting on the included plastic carry case can be dangerous to the battery cover. The plastic case has 2 snaps on the back to keep it secured. If you press too hard on the snaps, it puts pressure on the battery door and can easily break door's plastic tabs!
In summary, this is not the worst player out there. It's great for exercising, but so are a TON of other players on the market today. If I had to do it over again, I would not buy this unit. But in the 2 years I've had it, it's be useful... painful and annoying at times YES... but useful. Even with the screwed up display, I'll continue to use my m260 for my morning runs, but I'll have to find a better behaved unit for daily use.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating:
Summary: The anti-Ipod MP3 player 2007-09-04
Comment: Sansa has created an easily usable sturdy MP3 player that is $50 and can be used with Napster and Yahoo! Music. As an anti ipod parent this is a great thing for me. Of course, there are still daily calls for their own "iPod", but they love being to fill their MP3 with all new music on a daily basis if they choose. My 2 eight-year-olds both love their Sansa MP3 players.
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SanDisk Sansa M260 4GB MP3 Player (Blue)
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