Flexible, expandable, powerful, love it!

Recently, I decided to upgrade my MP3 player from the Sansa m240 that I had been using (I reviewed it last year--"Impressive little package" was the title of that review) to something bigger and better. I stuck with SanDisk for two reasons: One, the m240 performed flawlessly; and two, Sansa has become the best brand of MP3 player not named iPod (as a number of other reviewers have pointed out, the iPod is too proprietary, notably where file transfers are concerned).

Although the whole e200 series has been out for a while now, I've only had my e260 for a few days. Nevertheless, it has met my expectations. It has a lot of the things I loved about the m240 (quick file transfers, can play WMA and MP3 files, can be used as a portable hard drive for other data files if I so desire, excellent sound quality). Like the m200 series, the e200 series also includes an FM radio and a voice recorder (although I don't use those much) and firmware upgradeability.

But it also has a lot features I was missing in the m240:

A color screen (so I can view pictures and play videos)--this is a very nice screen, the kind I would have been thrilled to have had as a kid (back in the days when I wanted to watch TV shows that my parents wouldn't let me watch, I always pined for a Sony Watchman so I could watch those shows in bed without anyone knowing it).
4GB of capacity (technically, it's closer to 3.8GB, but it's still quadruple what my m240 had)
A MicroSD slot for even more capacity (I'm not using it right now, but it's nice to know it's there when I need it)
A nifty thumb wheel for scrolling through menus
The ability to record from the FM radio (which means that if some radio station is playing a song that's hard to find, boom, now you can record it and have an MP3 file of it)

There are some things I'm not crazy about (but will gladly live with):
From the time you press the on button, it takes about 12 seconds to get the opening menu.
When transferring videos to my Sansa (via the Sansa Media Converter software included on the installation/setup CD), the file size becomes larger. For example, a short video that was 32MB in WMV format on my PC took up 113MB on the e260 as a QuickTime file. It has me wondering if there is another way to convert the video to the QuickTime format without such a sacrifice in storage space.
As in my review of the m240, it is much easier to delete files using RealPlayer than it is in Windows Media Player. (That being said, I usually just use Windows Explorer to transfer files--Windows XP treats the Sansa as another hard drive, and transferring and deleting files to the Sansa is a snap that way.)
Unlike the standard "USB A to Mini B" cable that the m200 series used, the e200 series uses a more proprietary sync cable, which means if I should lose that cable, I'd have to look for a new one on eBay.
I've read that can get in through the port on the bottom of the MP3 player, so you'll need to avoid dirty and dusty places, and store it that little black slipcover that comes in the package.

I realize the following is true of a lot of MP3 players, but I think I should mention it here: You don't want to crack the screen. Navigating through the menus without it is just like flying blind. More to the point, the screen is darn near impossible to replace (you cannot detach it from the logic board the way I've been able to do on PDAs like the Palm III series or digital cameras like my HP M407, then cannibalize a similar model for a replacement screen--in the e200 series, the screen is soldered into the logic board). In other words--don't drop it!

In summation, this little player is easy to use, powerful, super-flexible, and expandable. Did I actually say the m240 was "fully loaded" in my review last year? Well, that statement is more true of the e260, which I hope to have for a very long time. I recommend it to anyone that wants the ability to play video on their MP3 player and/or an MP3 player with a larger capacity. Down with the iPod, long live Sansa!