My 2nd ever MP3 player, The 2GB Sansa C-150.

When I was reaching the end of my single digit years in the mid thousands, I was obsessed with only one thing... iPod. I really wanted an iPod nano, and all I dreamed about for a few years was having that sweet buttery click wheel in my hands to select my music from. In fact, as I look back on it, I cared way more about iPod and the hardware side of the player, than even listening to music itself. Thankfully, that did change as I became a teen and really desired to explore music itself, but I have to give credit to iPods and MP3 as a reason I am a music lover to this day. Something else I always dreamed of having was video in my pocket, something else iPod would eventually do for me.

One day in late 2007, I was rummaging through the junk bin in my parent's kitchen island, and I spotted something near the bottom that looked like an iPod. In fact, I was so sure it was an iPod I dug through tangled up cables, got my hands scraped up by angry USB/VGA cables, and spent quite awhile getting to it. When I did eventually pull it out, I was disappointed. It was not an iPod, it was a Sansa. Model c150. 2GB. Lame.

Okay, sure, not an iPod, but once my disappointment wore off, I quickly realized I had pulled a COLOR SCREEN MP3 PLAYER, which to a 7 year old in the digital personal revolution, is rich dark oil wells. So once I slapped a AAA battery in it and 'tested it', I received permission from my parents to take ownership of it. I did love it, and I took good care of it and used it until... well, we'll get back to that.

I don't have that exact player anymore, but what I do have is a new old stock example of the exact same model.



And there we go, the 2006 Sansa c150, looking fresh as a daisy. My childhood example was scratched to bits when I got it, but not this one! Just look at this mid 2000s packaging style, the red and blue was SanDisk's branding colors for back then, and all SD cards, boxes, and even print ads used this style of design. You may notice that the clear blister pack that is supposed to go around the outside is missing, it kinda disintegrated when I opened it, so I am left without the shell.



There's a great photo of the device from the back of the box... just look at that lush color display! There are also a lot of impressive stand out features on the back, like 15 hour battery life, FM radio, voice & radio recording, and photo viewing. The battery life is no joke too, I very much remember leaving a single AAA in the player for months on end without ever needing to change it during normal everyday use. Something else really in this player's favor is the Windows Media 'Plays For Sure' support.



Now I'm not going to get too much into the Microsoft Weeds on this, but the playsforsure badge was important back in the day because it allowed you to buy music from the Windows Media Music Store and play them on the go. Not any MP3 player could do this back at this point, so it was a win for the music industry and for Microsoft as well. It's even more important (especially for today), because having this badge means that you can use Windows Media Player exclusively as your music management jukebox software. In a world of iTunes, MusicMatch, Real Player, Rhapsody, and SonicStage, Windows Media Player was, in my opinion, the best and easiest way to manage music... so it really was awesome that this Sansa supported it right out of the box.



Back to the unit itself. A decent amount of stuff was included out of the box, but not as much as the RCA Lyra I recently took a look at. You get the main unit, some earbuds, a lanyard, a USB sync cable, a software CD, and some paperwork/ads. I never had the earbuds back in the day, but I did have the lanyard affixed to mine initially, which I got annoyed with and cut off.



While we are on the subject of USB sync cables, we might as well call out the first blatant rip-off of the iPod we are yet to see in this post, this proprietary SanDisk sync connector, which looks almost identical to a 30pin 'dock connector' from Apple. It is not the same (for I have tried to use this cable in an iPod, and an iPod cable with the c150m and they don't fit), so I really do not see the point in something like this, especially when Micro USB would have worked just fine, and everyone knows the 30pin connector was a sticking point on the iPods.



Something else I find humorous is this hearing disclaimer document included. It lists all of the common noise levels for different loud events, and states 'don't listen to your media player with headphones at an unsafe hearing level'. While there isn't anything inherently funny here, we will learn later why any user of the c150 shouldn't be worried about busting an eardrum.





Now let's get the device in-hand and take a look. This player really comes across as a slick and nifty lil' player, and I must say, it looks really sleek from all angles. The front is a very high-gloss plastic (that will scratch insanely easily ... don't ask me how I know), and the rear is a more substantial textured plastic. The battery door in the rear also has a flimsy clasp that I always thought would break but never did on my original unit. Overall, it doesn't feel cheap in the hand, but rather decently substantial and what'd you expect.

Now the controls are really odd on this player. First off all, it's another blatant iPod rip-off, stealing the appearance of the click wheel layout and misleading folks to believe that it has to be a scrolling wheel of some sort, but in reality the menu button is all weird and off to the side and it doesn't scroll or move... it's just a directional pad... which creaks when you press on it... fun.

To add insult to injury, some of the lettering on this player leads you to believe it is used in portrait orientation, and other lettering is landscape oriented. In reality, it may look like a nano when propped up, but you are forced to use this player on its side at all times, breaking any illusion to bystanders that you came up in the world and now have a black nano with a weird case.




Here are the side controls for the unit. I do really like the dedicated volume buttons that are surprisingly large given the size of the device, and the dedicated hold switch is also a welcome addition. These side controls don't feel as cheap as the front ones, and this is one area where I feel SanDisk beat out Apple. I never have liked using the click wheel for volume.






Now, FINALLY, we get to start some music playing and take a look at that gorgeous screen we saw on the box... actually no, this screen is dreadful. Yes the pixels are 'color', but the UI is actually just multiple shades of blue, and very washed out. It looks decent enough in the Music UI, but showing album art is just plain useless. If I had been the designer of that UI, I would have definitely omitted the ability for users to look at their artwork on that screen.

The overall music playing experience isn't bad, just basic. The UI looks a lot like the old nano 1st and 2nd gen UIs, except blue and now cut off due to the small screen. Your basic functions like repeat and shuffle all work fine, and you can select music pretty easily; However, due to the screen size, picking music can take more time than you'd like, and with no scroll wheel you just have to manually click through your music until you find what you want.

As far as sound quality goes, it's not winning any awards. First of all, it's very quiet and doesn't get nearly as loud as I like. Even with very efficient cheap lil' earbuds, I have to turn it up to max volume to hear it as I would like... so why even bother with the 'hearing damage disclaimer'? It is not dynamic, it sounds 'smeary', and any music played over it just becomes lifeless and dull. Is it bad? No. Is it good? No. It's just average for a MP3 player of it's time. I will say though even though it's not terrible, it is one of the lowest performing MP3 players I've ever heard as far as sound goes.



Now the photo viewing experience is on another level. SanDisk picked 8 sample photos to be used with this player, and literally none of them are what you should pick to show off this screen. Dark night time shots, photos of animals in low-light, and flowers from far away are not going to impress anyone. I imagine you could make this screen shine if you added sample photos that were over-saturated, and very heavy on deep colors, but light on contrast.

In the end, as a kid, the color screen sold me, no matter how bad, but in hind-sight, I would have been miles ahead with a high-contrast dot matrix screen that had a good backlight.




So, it's a flashy, affordable player with bad sound, poor screen, and weird controls... is there a saving grace here? YES. Yes there is. It's called 'Music Transfer Protocol'. This lovely term means I can plug the Sansa into my Windows XP computer without ANY drivers or additional software, and as long as my Windows Media Player is up to date, I'm copying my music... and that means ripped music with no DRM. This was a huge win for me back in the day, and still is a major selling point.




Getting it setup from within WMP is a breeze too, once you follow the setup wizard and decide if you want to auto-sync playlists and folders, you are dumped back into WMP's library screen, and you can simply make sync lists, drag music to them, and boom, they are moving to the Sansa. Keep in mind, you need at least WMP 10 to be able to do this.



So you may be wondering, why even bundle in a CD if it's all plug and play... welp that's an easy question to answer... MONEY. See, SanDisk was partnering with Rhapsody Music Store at this point, and they used the CD as an opportunity to give you this service out of the box... and get a fat stack of commission cash from Rhapsody for the trouble. I don't know anything about Rhapsody, so I can't comment on it myself, but at least you get an electronic user's guide and MP3-WMA converter included on the disc.



So there you have it. A perfectly adequate MP3 player from 2006, with some bling, and also a surprisingly easy sync process. Sure it doesn't sound awesome, but I'm sure it made a lot of people happy in the day, and that included myself.

The only question left unanswered is what happened to my personal Sansa c150. Simply put, the flash memory mysteriously died in it one day, and it forgot all of my songs and would no longer connect to the computer without boot-looping. Not sure what happened, it was working one day, and not the next.

In any case, its fate was sealed... e-waste.

 

I firmly believe that the future hope of this forum lies in part to a generation passionate about MP3 and digital players in the same way the current (and dwindling) fanbase appreciates cassette Walkmans and CD.

There's so much about these digital players to love and appreciate...