- Store up to 500 songs
- Memory card slot for pre-loaded cards
- Digital FM tuner with 40 presets
- Rechargeable battery lasts up to 15 hours
- Built-in clip for easy carrying
The only two cons I have on this player are the battery life and the sleep/wake options. This is mainly compared to my Walkman, so it may not be bad for most players of its size.
In terms of battery, my Walkman never really seemed to need to be recharged. I guess the occasional plug-in for transferring music was enough to keep it going. The Clip+ seems to always be almost dead and has gone dead on me a couple of times in workouts because the indicator isn''t that good (goes from half to empty). That said, it''s a rechargeable battery so it''s no big deal, you just have to remember to charge it a bit more.
Regarding sleep/wakethe Walkman would go into sleep mode within seconds of stopping a track and i could leave it for days and when I came back and pressed play, it would start instantlyno logon, no hello, just the track playing right where i left off. The Clip does not turn off when you stop playing. There are options to set it to turn off or sleep automatically after a given duration, but when i have that on, it will sleep or turn off even if music is playing sometimes. If I am missing something, let me know, but that seems ridiculous. So I have to manually turn it off when I am done and when I turn it back on, it takes about 3 to 5 seconds to get back up and running.
These negatives are pretty minor and are well worth the advantages of the resume features in playback. It''s a great little player.
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This is the perfect mp3 player. The fact that you can expand the memory to 18+ GB with an inexpensive microSD card??? holy cow. I used my wife''s iPod shuffle before this, and there is no comparision, really. Except that this is 20-30% cheaper, and 1000% better. This has a built in customizable equalizer, something which the ipod did not. It has a screen similar to many expensive ipods that help you navigate the simple menus, although it does not play video ( I don''t watch video when I work out, run, or mow the lawn). Battery life is great, and this isn''t much larger than the shuffle. Clips on in the same fashion, weighs just as much, and the sound quality is phenomenal. It is a USB plug and play, so you can just drop and drag files to it. SOOOOO easy. No proprietary garbage software to use, like i-tunes. There is an option to sync playlists and things with Windows Media Player, but I haven''t, and won''t care to try. I just load all my favorite songs and randomly play the music. And now with Windows 7..hehe...Mac will dwindle back to fan-boy status and they''ll have to start making cheaper, less proprietary hardware and software, or they will never survive. I''m Robert, and I''m a PC :)Read Best Reviews of SanDisk Sansa Clip+ 2 GB MP3 Player (Black) Here
This is my second Sansa Clip. The first is still in perfect cosmetic and working condition. I just wanted a new upgrade. I love the new features that Sansa has added. The ability to go as far as 18GB using the mini SD card! Awesome.The sound quality is perfect. Reception on the radio is never a problem even when I am in locations with alot of interference.
Durability is great. I throw mine in my purse and it gets tossed around. My son uses it everywhere and is as careless with it as any 9 year old would be.
Adding MP3s is as easy as connecting the USB cable to your computer and dragging the file. All the MP3s are sorted alphabetically. I name my files numerically so that they will play in the order I would like.
Only Downside: Battery life is not perfect. It''s what to be expected with electronics including my cell. A fully charged Sansa Clip will last me approx 6 hours throughout my workday. If I charge connecting the USB to the laptop I can''t listen while charging. However, if I charge with the AC adaptor I can listen while charging. Also, even with the Sansa Clip turned off the battery will lose it''s charge. A little annoying when I think it''s fully charged and the battery is already drained. Again, I have these same problems with my cell phones.
I''ve never used IPODS and can''t compare. However, this is a much less expensive music player. I have never thought I was trading quality to save money. This has always been a very good quality player.
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I love mp3 players, including this one, for the most part. I use it mainly for listening to audio books, downloaded radio podcasts, and FM radio, but also for downloaded music. I''ve used this updated model (the Sansa Clip+) for only month but I used its predecessor (the Sansa Clip) for a few years. I take it with me everywhere and use it constantly, so it suffers a lot of punishment.I bought this product because I liked the older model and because the "mp3 players" review chose it as the best mp3 player under $100.
I''ve owned two Clip+ (2 gb) players and about five Clip (1 gb) mp3 players over the last few years, and I''d say they last an average of about 4-6 months before breaking down. That may not sound like much, but I''m hard on them (I listen for several hours a day, accidentally bang them around, etc.). No other mp3 player I''ve owned has been as durable. I''ve previously owned a Sandisk Sansa m250 and some cheap "Creative" brand mp3 player. The Clip and Clip+ are far superior. And smaller, too.
One problem: I bought a Clip+ (2 gb) player a month ago and, unfortunately, the battery died after 2 weeks. Yet Amazon handled it very well by sending me a new one in two days (without charge) and paying the return shipping fee on the dead one. Good thing it died within the 30-day return period!
The newer Clip+ model is an overall improvement over the older Clip model. However, some of the changes they made to the new model actually made the mp3 player worse! I hope a product designer at Sansa reads this review and makes the suggested changes to future models. Or, better, makes these changes to the Clip+ by way of their downloadable firmware updates.
STRONG POINTS OF THE CLIP+
1. The new model has a micro SD card slot; the older model doesn''t, as with most mp3 players. Very nice. So, there''s no point buying a 4gb or 8gb Clip or Clip+. Instead, save your money by buying the 2gb Clip+ and boosting memory by buying a 4gb or 8gb micro-sd card for $5 to $20.
2. They made the actual clip permanently attached to the mp3 player, unlike the older model''s removable clip, which would fall off your belt when the clip separated from the player while walking or jogging.
3. It plays many digital formats, a few more than the older Clip model did.
4. It''s easy to download firmware updates from the Sandisk website. It wasn''t easy with the older model.
5. It''s fast and easy to load songs onto the player-just drag and drop, as with a flash drive
6. Nice voice recorder, though recordings take up too much memory
7. Good FM radio reception, better than my bulky Sony walkman.
8. Good sound quality
9. Somewhat easier navigation of the menus and nicer display than the older Clip model. The menus also give you a little more info than the older Clip model did.
WEAK POINTS OF THE CLIP+
1. Takes too long to "boot up" when you turn it on. For the impatient person, that matters!
2. The display is hard to read in bright sunlight
3. The older Clip has a far better "locking" feature (you can choose to lock the device so nothing happens when you press the buttons). With the newer Clip+, however, you cannot lock it to keep it from accidentally turning on. And it takes longer to activate the lock function.
4. With the older Clip model, when using the useful "play previous"/ bookmarking feature, you always resume play where you left off on the last audio book, podcast or song you listened to. A very convenient and time-saving feature. However, with the newer model, this only happens if the last song/ audiobook/ podcast is in the "Music" folder, but not if it is placed in the "Podcast" or "Audiobook" folders. This is a real annoyance, since you have to remember what you were last listening to, navigate back to the correct track, and select "resume playback" from previous point. Too many clicks; it takes too long. One solution is to put whichever song/book you repeatedly go back to in the "music" folder only.
5. Here''s the most IRRITATING problem with the Clip+. Unlike the older model Clip, on the Clip+ model you cannot easily rewind through the various tracks of an audiobook because you can''t rewind past the beginning of the track you''re on. If you want to re-listen to a passage by rewinding to, say, a point 20 seconds earlier in the book, and that happens to be on the previous track, you cannot directly rewind to that point. Instead, you have to waste time by clicking many times to navigate to the *beginning* of the previous track and then fast forward for a while until you get to the end of the track. That takes way too long. If, like me, you like to get an audiobook cd or music cd from the library and rip it to your computer in mp3 format and then download it to your mp3 player, you will frequently run into this problem. (Compact discs are broken up into a series of tracks of three or so minutes in length).
6. This may sound nit-picking, but there''s an ugly "slot radio" icon permanently on the Clip+ navigation menu and you can''t get rid of it. This slows down your navigation through the menus. Most people, including me, will never choose to buy a $40 "slotradio" card, no matter how hard Sandisk pushes the product. It''s a read-only micro sd card loaded with 1000 songs that they''ve chosen for you. You can''t choose which songs are on it and you can''t even see the full list of songs or artists. All you choose is the genre. The songs can be played only in a random sequence and you can''t delete songs or record the songs you like to your computer. (I''m reminded of this lame slotradio product every time I see the ugly icon on the menu, like a bad advertisement you can''t escape.)
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The built-in clip is handy, but also obvious since it is in the product name.Here are some notable features which are all either non-obvious or uncommon for the price and size:
1. Slot for adding memory. Not sure how much memory you want to buy? Get the cheap model and add more later if you want. I recommend buying this cheap model, because adding an extra card later is virtually the same price difference as buying the high-capacity model up front, so you don''t lose any money. If the unit is damaged or scratched too much for your fashion sense, it is much cheaper to remove your large-capacity card and just replace the cheap player. In fact, I think mp3 players ought to include NO memory and an empty card slot, since upgrading to newer models is a waste of the memory locked in the old unit.
2. Standard size mini USB transfer and charging port. No stupid proprietary MacinSoft (Yes, it''s OK to hate them both!) data/power ports. I already have mini USB cables hanging off of all of my computers for other devices, though this unit includes a handy travel-length cable.
3. File/folder browsing, OR tag-based sorting. Browse your songs by tagged artist, album, style, or rating, OR just look through them by the same file and folder structure you copied onto it. Many cheap players do it one way or the another, but don''t offer a choice.
4. Transfer files either as a standard removable USB drive, or a wacky mediaplayer-based MTP connection. This is one of those things which you probably don''t need to worry about if you don''t know what it means, but it''s another thing which most cheap mp3 players only work one way or the other. The default setting figures it out for you, but advanced users can force it one way or the other if they want to.
5. Bright display which is easy to see outside. It''s a 2-color OLED, which is ideal for when you only need to read text. Not a power-hungry full-color display which blacks out in sunlight.
6. Do file management stuff from within the player. Rate songs, delete songs, and view full file properties.
7. Create a playlist from within the player itself. Called the "Go List", pressing and holding the center button will add songs to a temporary playlist. It can only hold one of these in-player playlists at once, but it isn''t typical to get a low-priced player which can do this at all. And of course you can add multiple playlists if you add them from the PC software. If you don''t want to mess with official playlists, just drag&drop the songs you want as a "playlist" into their own folder, and select that folder to play.
and finally...
8. GREAT sound quality, both from the player itself and from the included headphones. Very few players of this size have such good sound quality (even full-range response, and no amplifier noise), let alone any for this price. Sandisk also picked some pretty good earbuds, which is a feature often given no respect by manufacturers.
One minor complaint:
There is no key illumination, although the d-pad is very simple and I can operate it in the dark just fine.
One tip:
I was initially confused about how to get back to the playing screen if I was messing with settings in the menu while listening to music. The "home" button doesn''t just go to the home screen (the top-level menu screen) as per the house icon, but toggles between that screen and the player screen. So the answer is, just push the home button twice.
There isn''t anything significant I would want added to this mp3 player which already has high-end features and sound quality for a low price. I don''t need a 4-inch screen to hear music. I also don''t need a higher price, not just because I want to save money up front, but for peace-of-mind. I like listening to music during physical activity without worrying about damaging some $150 iZune.
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