1 GB of storage and media playing goodness!
Written: Feb 20 '05
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Pros: 1GB of storage for a little over $100 with an FM tuner and mic
Cons: Wish it was blue in color and had other colors for the LCD
The Bottom Line: The SanDisk Digital Media Player has big storage at a small price; sound is good and the FM tuner is icing on the cake!
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| ivplay's Full Review: SanDisk SDMX1 (1 GB) MP3 Player |
The SanDisk 1GB Digital Media Player was a Christmas gift to me from my wife. She had asked me long ago what I wanted, and I knew that I needed a new MP3 player for workouts. The Apple i-Pods were the hot item, and the Creative Labs Zen Micro were the new kid on the block. However, I didn’t want to chance a hard drive media player for workouts which include jogging, running and lifting when indoors and long bike rides when outdoors. I wanted to go with solid state memory as there are no moving parts and the shock resistance is much higher, just in case. At around the same time one of the online stores I peruse regularly ran a special on the SanDisk SDMX1-1024R Digital Media Player for $115. That was a deal I couldn’t pass up, so I forwarded it to my wife ‘just in case’…
The SanDisk Digital Media Player arrived in its plastic packaging with the following:
SanDisk 1GB Digital Media Player
Ear bud style headphones
Arm Strap for exercising, etc.
USB 2.0 connector cable
User manual
Physical appearance
The player itself is silver in size and approximately 3” long by 1.5” deep by 1” wide. The 512MB version of this player comes in metallic blue while the 256MB version arrives red in color. My preference would have been to get the blue shade, but I wanted the full gigabyte of storage more. This digital media player is actually smaller than my older iRiver 32MB unit, although about the same in shape. There is a slight bulge present along the back. This is formed around the battery compartment that houses one AAA battery for powering the unit. It does make it convenient, as you can stand the unit in front of you resting on the battery compartment, and the LCD screen will be at about 20 degrees from vertical. This is easy to read and stable to boot.
In this orientation, the left side of the unit contains the headphone jack as well as the microphone. Also present along the left is a formed plastic connector for attaching the media player to a neck strap, although I do not personally use this. The far right side of the unit houses a rubber cover that flips out of the way to reveal the USB connector for linking with a PC.
There are three buttons and a slider along the top side of the unit. The first button will turn the unit on and off by holding the button in and also acts as the play/stop button. The next button over is the record button, and while in voice record mode will start the unit recording. Hitting this button again will stop the recording. The next button over is labeled A -> B and controls the looping and shuffling mode. Finally the slider is a hold control which will halt all control via buttons, etc. Whatever state the player is in at the time the slider is moved to Hold is how it will remain until the slider is moved back. This is handy to keep the unit from accidentally powering up while in your gym bag.
The back of the unit contains the battery compartment, while the front contains the LCD screen and directional control stick. The LCD screen will display various menus and information regarding what is currently playing and what options the user can control, and the stick will be used to select and choose the options. The stick can move in the four major coordinated and also be pressed in to make a selection.
Transferring files
I connected this to the computer with the supplied USB cable prior to inserting the battery to see if the unit could be powered via USB; it worked. The screen lit up with a deep indigo and indicated via a picture that it was connected to the computer. With Windows XP, the OS recognized the player immediately and loaded the drivers for plug and play functionality. With a normal setup, your Media Player would show up as Drive E: in windows and be ready for transferring files. However, with my computer this did not work. I have multiple partitions and drives on my computer using the letters E, F, G, H and I. I had to right-click on My Computer, go to Manage and open the Disk Management applet. From here I could see that two partitions were given the letter E:, and for this reason the SanDisk player was not showing up. I chose the SanDisk drive and chose to change the drive letter assigned to P:. After this I was ready to transfer files within the explorer.
Transferring files is as easy as copying and pasting files within your normal folders. Select a group of music files to transfer and copy them. Open the Media Player Drive (E: in most cases, P: on my computer) and paste the files in. You can set up folders for sorting your music or copy and paste pre-made folders as well.
The drive can act as a typical flash memory card as well, assuming you have memory space left over. Simply connect the unit to your computer and copy and paste files over. Take the unit to another computer, connect it and copy and past the files. It is that simple. The only difference is that with this drive you will need the external USB cable to connect to your PC.
For those who care about that sort of thing, I benchmarked this drive using SisSoft Sandra 2005 Lite. Using the Flash Card benchmark, this drive turns in some respectable speeds. With 2MB file tests, the drive reads at 10MB/sec, or 57X speed rating. The write speed is 5.3 MB/s or 30X write speed. The speed drops slightly when dealing with 64MB file sizes, but not much. Overall, transferring files to this unit is simple and very quick as well!
Modes
There are three main modes for the SanDisk 1GB Digital Media Player. Obviously this can play audio tracks recorded to the unit. The unit also has an FM tuner built in with 20 presets for all of your favorites. Finally, the unit can be utilized to take voice recordings if that is desired. I have used this unit for all three modes at one point or another, and will give you my viewpoint on each below.
Audio Playback
Audio Playback is what I bought this unit for, and from what I have heard in the past few months it does this very well. Obviously if you rip your tracks to poor quality settings, this may impact your listening experience. I use both MP3 and WMA for my tracks depending on if I bought them online or ripped them myself. With MP3 most of my tracks are 128 kb/s but a large percentage are also recorded at 192 kb/s. A small percentage are recorded at 96 kb/s, but very few. The WMA files I have all appear to be in 128 kb/s with no 64 kb/s. This was worrisome when I bought the player as I had heard that there were issues with playing anything but 64 kb/s WMA files without loud popping and distortion. My unit comes with version 0.97 firmware and as of yet I have noticed no audible distortion at all at any resolution, either MP3 or WMA.
My player is currently filled to the gills with 276 tracks in total. Assuming that each is 3.5 minutes I would guesstimate this to be 16 or so hours. Undoubtedly if I reduced the recording quality to 64 kb/s, I could easily double this but I am not interested in more songs at the moment. I have had this in use since the first week in December (yes, I opened it early) and I have only replaced the battery twice. I cannot tell you how much time this works out to exactly, but I can tell you that SanDisk states that a fully charged AAA will drive the player for 15 hours of continuous listening. From my experience I would agree with this and say that I may be getting even more than that.
FM reception
The SanDisk 1GB Digital Media Player comes with an FM tuner with 20 settable stations. I use this when I go to the gym over lunch, as I will grab a treadmill and watch CNN Headline News with the streaming audio transmitted over a closed circuit FM channel. The gym has three televisions and three stations to tune into for audio. I have these stations preset on the SanDisk as presets 1, 2 and 3 which allows for quickly changing the station in case something on another set catches my eye. I have also used the FM tuner at work, although with limited success.
The FM quality is fairly good with a mild amount of background noise as is typical from FM stations. At the gym the stations come in loud and clear as the transmitter is all of 15 feet away and within line of sight. At the plant I can get FM reception so long as I stay within the wooden construction office building. If I go into the factory proper which is constructed of brick and concrete, the reception becomes very spotty. I have checked the FM reception at my house and in my truck and it works well. However, in those locations I have better receivers with antennas, so why use it?
Voice Recording
There is a built-in microphone for voice recording, and the operation of the unit in this mode is simple. The recordings will save in WMA 32kb/s format, and anything within about 10 feet of the microphone will pick up. Closer is better, obviously. I have recorded messages from my boys to Grandma and Grandpa using this mode and then sent the audio via email. This works well for sending small audio clips. I assume this could also be used for recording meetings at work, although I do not use it in this fashion. My unit is filled up with music, the primary reason I bought it!
Headphones
The headphones that accompany this unit are nice, but nothing stellar. They are ear-bud style headphones with the cord for one ear shorter than the other. I assume this is for when strapped on your arm in the exercise holster, but don’t really know… The headphones play most songs acceptably with minimal distortion. However, if you are playing a rap song with a deep, deep bass the speakers will not reproduce the tones. On some songs with very high notes, there will be noticeable distortion as well, sounding as though several notes were blended together rather than reproduced separately. For most mainstream listening at moderate intensities, they will work. The sound is loud enough to where you can comfortably hear the music in a crowded room, although others around you will most likely hear it as well!
Exercise case
The exercise case is a flimsy plastic pouch that fits snugly around the player with cutouts for the jack, microphone and buttons. This pouch is connected to a stretchable grey strap with Velcro that fits around your arm to secure your digital media player to your person during strenuous exercise. I do not like the cheap feel of the plastic case and strap, but I do use it often. It has a function to fill and does so, although it will not turn heads with envy!
Options
The firmware allows for many user-changeable settings. There is a five band equalizer with five pre-sets and one user defined setting. The user can set a fade-in and fade-out as well as several forms of repeat and shuffle for your listening pleasure. The LCD orientation can be changed from right-hand to left-hand orientation, flipping the screen. The ID3 tags can be turned on and off, and the scrolling and playback speeds can be changed. Why would you ever want to listen to your songs at half speed? I am not sure, but you can do it with this unit. Another useful setting is sleep mode, which I use when at the gym. I set the sleep timer for a given amount of time for a workout, and when the unit powers down it is time to go. I can’t imagine sleeping with ear-buds in, but I suppose you could use the unit to listen to music while falling asleep with the sleep timer as well…
Overall
For the price, I don’t think this unit can be beat. I get 1GB of storage space for my music files. I can record meetings or voice messages or I can use the unit to transfer files back and forth just like a regular flash memory card. The firmware offers many options for the attractive and intuitive interface on the indigo LCD, although a different color option such as green or red would be nice. The sound is good, and the FM tuner makes this a great buy overall. I would not hesitate to buy this again at the price I paid, and I highly recommend it for your flash memory player needs. I do wish the higher capacity drive came in metallic blue as opposed to silver, but I can live with it!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 115
Recommended for: Athletes - Lightweight and Portable, Perfect for the Gym
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