Sansa MP3 Clip

By mp3deals

Excecutive Sumarry about Sansa MP3 by Grahm Skee

Sansa

The Sansa Clip is SanDisk's newest edition to the small, low-capacity player market. What sets this Clip apart from the others is its unique form factor and surprisingly good sound quality. Sansa's have not been known for good sound quality.

Specification

• Capacity: 1GB / 2GB
• Colors: Black, Blue, Pink, Red
• Screen: 2 Color OLED
• Battery Life: 15 Hours
• Audio Formats: MP3, WMA, WAV, Audible

Accessories

The Clip comes with the basics: a 4″ standard USB plug and earbuds. The clip on the player, though, does work very well for active use.

Design

The exterior of the player is made entirely of plastic. Right angle headphone plugs get in the way of the volume controls on the right of the player. Switching the USB port and headphone jack , or maybe even placing the headphone jack at the bottom of the player, would have been a better setup.

Features

FM Radio & Recording

The FM reception quality was all over the place.

Voice Recording

When recording, the Sansa Clip can be paused which makes it convenient for voice dictation or class lectures. Like most players the tactile buttons are audible, and microphonic sounds will be picked up though simply handling the device.

Sleep Timer

Audio

Browsing

Playlists

Playlist must be managed from a media player such as Windows Media Player or the like. The player has a 5-band custom EQ as well as several presets. That said, I leave the Clip at a flat EQ since it performs nicely across the sound spectrum.

Sound Quality

SanDisk touts in the press release that the Clip is "…one of the best sounding MP3 players on the market." Those two players, compared to the Clip, had a slight advantage, noticeably with the bit more clarity in the midbass and highs. The bottom line is that the Clip can run with the higher end players and is more than acceptable to use with a $100+ set of headphones.

Conclusion

I was really looking forward to this player because of its claims of having great sound quality, but to be completely honest, I was very skeptical since the Sansa family has historically produced mediocre sound quality. The feature set is standard like many MP3 players and the interface is straight forward, with a slight learning curve unless you are familiar with Sansa players. The Clip has found a permanent home in my gearbag.

PLUS

• Great sound quality
• Inexpensive
• Durable
• Nice form factor

MINUS

• Position of headphone jack
• Poor radio reception
• No microSD card slot

SanDisk Sansa Clip vs iPod Shuffle

Price

This clip retails for $10 to $15 cheaper in similar capacities. 1GB Mp3 versions sell for $35 and 2GB versions sell for $55. Apple doesn't have a 4GB and frankly a 4GB screenless MP3 player doesn't sound too appealing.

The iPod shuffle has this one in the bag.

Winner: iPod Shuffle

Supported Formats

Shuffle: MP3, AAC, WAV, AA, AIFF. Clip: MP3, WMA, WAV, AA. Debating this from a qualitative standpoint it's hard to just hand over the crown to the shuffle since it supports one rarely used format over the Clip.

Winner: iPod Shuffle

Usability

The Clip has a screen, ability to make on the go playlists, non proprietary USB connection; the Shuffle has none of these. There are others but I won't pour salt into the wounds.

Winner: Sansa Clip

OS compatibility

The Shuffle works for Windows and Mac and uses a proprietary transfer protocol. The Clip works with any OS that accepts a standard MSC disk drive including Windows, Linux, and Mac.

Winner: Sansa Clip

Music Service Compatibility

The huffle allows for DRM content download purchases through iTunes and obviously DRM free content providers.

Winner: Sansa Clip

Sound Quality

The Shuffle doesn't sound bad, it just sounds very lacking in dynamics when paired up with an expensive set of headphones.

Features

The Clip has a screen, EQ, FM radio, voice recording, multiple OS support, MTP/MSC user select and I'm sure there are other subjective features.

Winner: Sansa Clip

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