- Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 16 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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4 out of 4 people found this review helpful
4.0 stars
"Great small-capacity player"
Pros: Good value, MTP convenience, Portable
Cons: The shuffle algorithm could be better. Tack-to-track transition is not seamless.
Summary: I bought this player about 3 weeks ago and have been using it heavily since.
It's slightly larger than the current iPod Shuffle, being around 2.25"x1.5"x.5" in size, but the display, size, and price make this one of the best small-capacity player on the market. I use it in the car, at work, going running, mowing the lawn
It definitely doesn't weigh you down.
I have about 450 mp3s ripped at 192kbps on there, and could probably fit around 50 more. The music that I listen to tends to have longer tracks(6-8 minutes on average as opposed to 4 minutes).
It operates as an MTP device on Windows, so you can drag/drop to add music or use Windows Media to sync. The drag/drop option was important to me because I don't enjoy being tied to proprietary software (*cough* iTunes). It comes with software and a free trial for Rhapsody, but it isn't necessary for music management.
Before I get into the other features, let me say that I bought this strictly as an mp3 player, so just about all of the other features/settings have gone unused.
Other features:
It has an FM tuner, on which the reception is decent, with it being slightly worse than a car stereo but better than any alarm clock radio I've ever had. It allows you to record from the tuner and save them as wave files. I have not yet tried this feature, but I'm pleasantly surprised by this option since I know that other companies such as Creative have stopped including this and even disabled it on existing players with firmware upgrades.
There is a voice recording feature with a built in microphone. But yet again, I have not tried this feature.
There is a 5-band eq on the player, with several genre presets like "pop" and "rock" as well as a custom feature. I don't normally use the eq feature on anything. My recommendation would be to invest in good headphones over investing in a high-priced player, as headphones will affect what you hear much more so than the mp3 player.
It's Rhapsody and Audible compatible, yet another feature that I haven't tried. I'm one of the last remaining CD-buyers around. I know, I know. It has more to do with the prog-rock concept albums that I like [King Crimson box set on the way ].
The bad:
Concerning the shuffle feature. I spent a few hours going through my library and picking songs that I wanted on the player so that I could put it on shuffle and get a good variety of songs without being compelled to skip any that were selected by the player. The problem is that it seems to have 3 or 4 predetermined sets of shuffled music, and what's worse is it starts all over again if you turn the player off and turn it back on.
For instance, say you have 100 tracks on there, going from 0 to 99. You put the player on shuffle and you select "Play All". You might hear these tracks:
87, 55, 14, 24, and 33...
Halfway through 33, you pause the player and turn it off. You turn the player back on, resume 33 and it finishes, then, all of the sudden, you hear:
87, 55, 14, and 24 AGAIN...but then it skips 33 because you've already listened to it since the last time that you powered up the player.
The ways around this that I have found is swapping out a song or two from the player every now and then, or selecting a song in the "All Tracks" list to start with, rather than letting the player choose.
The bottom line:
This is an incredibly solid mp3 player. The price is what did it for me. Costco had a great deal on this player, which edged it out over the Creative Zen V Plus (which I would also recommend). While I still enjoy my 40GB Creative Zen Touch and it has its place on long road trips or for full-album listening, the Sansa Clip is much more portable and practical for everyday use.
Where to buy
SanDisk Sansa Clip (4GB, silver):
$54.95
| store | price | in stock? | rating |
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Amazon.com Marketplace
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$54.95 | Yes |
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