How's the E200 port for day to day use?

[jdong]

I'm looking to purchase an inexpensive Rockbox powered player. It seems like the Sansa E200 is a good choice for that, at least from the wiki...

I just wanna know, for curiousity, from people who own these units how well Rockbox works on it. Is it stable/usable for day to day music playing? How's the battery life?

[saratoga]

Its pretty stable.  I haven't had a crash anyway.  Battery life is a little above 12 hours I think, maybe a bit more now.

[jdong]

Thanks. As long as it works for playing music, I'm happy

Any other suggestions for a sub-$100 unit that runs Rockbox well?

[Soader03]

You could chose a Gigabeat F series. You'll have to buy it on eBay for ~100$ a F40. Used or new in the box.

[debu]

I wouldn't recommend the E200..  The headphone jack broke on both that I tried..  I just did a little research and it seems this is common.

[Soader03]

I wouldn't recommend the E200..  The headphone jack broke on both that I tried..  I just did a little research and it seems this is common.

Hey, interresting... It happened on the E260 of my wife, 2 months after I bought it...

[elborak]

I wouldn't recommend the E200..  The headphone jack broke on both that I tried.

It is a common failure, but if you know how to use a soldering iron, it's a very easy repair. I've fixed quite a few. Add some epoxy it'll never break again.

[dreamlayers]

How's the background electrical noise in the audio?

What about screens breaking?  I've read several reviews where the screen broke without even a drop.

I was almost going to buy one but I decided not to for those reasons.  There are some very good deals now, like e280 (8GB) for $169 Canadian at Future Shop.

[cpchan]

I have had mine for over 6 months and I have no problems with it.

Charles

[the_winch]

I'm not sure the build quality of e200s is that great, mine has a couple of annoying issues.

You can activate most of the buttons by pushing the case around them. For instance pressing the bottom quarter of the screen activates the play/pause button. I often pause it when bumping into something with the player in my pocket.

It also has issues turning on. The wheel light comes on and nothing else happens. Most of the time holding the power button will turn it off and it starts up correctly next time its turned on. Occasionally it fails to start up and won't turn off requiring the battery to be removed for a short while.

Perhaps I just have a lemon. Ignoring the issues with the hardware rockbox runs fine.

[cynic]

I've had my sansa for going on 9 months now and I haven't had any problems. I also heard that the screen was susceptible to cracking so I invested in a case with a hard plastic screen protector insert; however, for the few months prior to that the unprotected screen was perfectly fine.

As for the firmware... Rockbox works great on the Sansa, I find that it sounds better than the stock firmware. Under the normal use its stable and gets fairly good battery life. Overall I'm very happy with my Rockboxed E280.

[izzy84075]

I got my E250 on the 21st, and put Rockbox on it that day. The only times I've booted into the original FW since then is to put music on it. I've found being able to flip the screen 180 VERY useful.

I just wish Doom wasn't so squished...

[kenaneu]

I have to say, I thought my e250 was OK before rockbox, but now, it's fantastic!

I am using the following:

cpchan's sansa build (http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum/showthread.php?t=12583) with the KratoGlass theme.  

The e250 stock firmware was clunky, unintuitive, crash prone and frankly had less than stellar audio quality.  With rockbox, I was able to adjust the audio output to the point of frankly sounding better than any other portable player I have ever tried.  I use mine with a pair of shure e5c's, and the sound quality is now stunning.  

The interface is simple, clean, fast and works well.  WAY better than the clunky sandisk firmware.  

One of the other big factors that lead me to rockbox was support for the SDHC cards.  It really peeved me that Sandisk themselves did not offer support for this even though the hardware is capable...  But rockbox does!  Sandisk swears at some point microSDHC capacity will hit 32Gb, but in the meantime an additional 4-8gb is sure going to be nice.

I could go on and on about how much rockbox offers for this player, but I think you get the point.  Just get it and try it - it's fantastic.  

P.S. make sure you get a theme - the interface is VERY "functional" without one.  

[Soader03]

Sandisk swears at some point microSDHC capacity will hit 32Gb, but in the meantime an additional 4-8gb is sure going to be nice.

If I understand well, there will have 32gb cards enterring the micro SD slot in that player?

[ROMzombie]

I've been using the Sandisk Rockbox port on my e250 for the last couple of months... it's been of limited use to me in the past but now that it supports WMA, I've been using it exclusively.  Very stable.