Soil moisture (SM) products provided by remote sensing approaches at continental scale are of great importance for land surface modeling and numerical weather prediction. Before using remotely sensed SM products it is crucial to validate them. This paper presents an evaluation of AMSR-E (Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer - Earth Observing System) SM products over two sites. They are located in the south-west of France and in the Sahelian part of Mali in West Africa, in the framework of the SMOSREX (Surface Monitoring Of Soil Reservoir Experiment) and AMMA (African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis) projects respectively. The most representative station of the four stations of each site is used for the comparison of AMSR-E derived and in-situ SM measurements in absolute and normalized values. Results suggest that, although AMSR-E SM product is not able to capture absolute SM values, it provides reliable information on surface SM temporal variability, at seasonal and rainy event scale. It is shown, however, that the use of radiometric products, such as polarization ratio, provides better agreement with ground stations than the derived SM products.