Tuesday, September 11, 2007
The SanDisk Sansa View...Reborn?
Posted by Jason Dunn in "HARDWARE" @ 04:24 PM
"So you might remember that earlier this year SanDisk introduced, and then somewhat abruptly cancelled, the Sansa View, a new widescreen flash-based portable media player. At the time they said they wanted to "re-scope the product" and "develop a PMP that will meet the needs of the market." Well, the result is the all-new Sansa View, a completely different device that seems more like a proper successor to SanDisk's much-loved Sansa e200 series than a follow-up to the product we played with at CES back in January. The result is a smaller player that less video-centric, but does improve on the e200 series in lots of important ways. They've upped storage to 16GB (there's also an 8GB version coming out), made it thinner (it's about 8.8mm at its thinnest), added better video codec support (it handles MPEG4, WMV, and h.264), increased the screen size and resolution (to 2.4-inches and 320 x 240 pixels, respectively)..."
Let me tell you a tale: once upon a time there was a product called the Sansa View. It was a portable media player, focused around video and photo playback - a nice big 4 inch screen, 480 x 272 resolution, support for all sorts of video codecs, and a slender size. It was supposed to come out on April 20th for $299 - and it would have been a fairly unique product, likely cherished by many. I did an email Q&A with one of the people at SanDisk working on the product, and got even more excited about it. Then the product was delayed. Then it was cancelled. I wasn't sure what kind of an ending the story would have, but it seems the answer is clear: they completely re-did the Sansa View and came up with a very different device.
This new Sansa View looks like a great audio player, but with a 2.4 inch screen at 320 x 240 resolution, it's not designed to be a video player, which I think is a shame. The SanDisk marketing materials say it's got a "wide screen display", but last time I checked 320 x 240 isn't wide screen. Who's going to challenge the iPod Touch? Who's going to deliver a thin player with a 4" wide screen, great battery life, and support for a variety of video codecs? Transcoding should never be "Plan A". SanDisk, I'm feeling a bit let down here...
Let me tell you a tale: once upon a time there was a product called the Sansa View. It was a portable media player, focused around video and photo playback - a nice big 4 inch screen, 480 x 272 resolution, support for all sorts of video codecs, and a slender size. It was supposed to come out on April 20th for $299 - and it would have been a fairly unique product, likely cherished by many. I did an email Q&A with one of the people at SanDisk working on the product, and got even more excited about it. Then the product was delayed. Then it was cancelled. I wasn't sure what kind of an ending the story would have, but it seems the answer is clear: they completely re-did the Sansa View and came up with a very different device.
This new Sansa View looks like a great audio player, but with a 2.4 inch screen at 320 x 240 resolution, it's not designed to be a video player, which I think is a shame. The SanDisk marketing materials say it's got a "wide screen display", but last time I checked 320 x 240 isn't wide screen. Who's going to challenge the iPod Touch? Who's going to deliver a thin player with a 4" wide screen, great battery life, and support for a variety of video codecs? Transcoding should never be "Plan A". SanDisk, I'm feeling a bit let down here...
