Home > Consumer Reviews > SanDisk(R) Sansa(R) Clip+ 8GB MP3 Player (Black)

I owned the first generation clip, and the new 8gb clip+ retains everything that was great about the first while adding all around refinements.

Pros:
- Overall build quality has improved, but especially with the clip mechanism.
- Files on MicroSD integrate seemlessly with the on board memory.
- The volume and power buttons have more ergonomic placement on the device.
- Sound quality remains great.
- Audiobook files can be sped up slightly to save some "reading" time.
- The interface is a little smoother and nicer to move through.
- The square trackpad makes it easier to navigate without looking at the player. (good for runners)


Cons:
- No cap on the MicroSD slot, so that could potentially get dirty.


If you don't need gimmicks such as touch screens and web browsers, then this player is quite possibly the best on the market for value, size, and quality. The Clip+ is definitely worth the few extra bucks over what the first gen clip is selling for now.

I've been very pleased with this small wonder, it is about 1/2 the size of your average portable mp3/video player with an LCD screen, but the OLED screen on the Clip+ is still very readable and easily navigable. I've paired my player with a 16GB MicroSDHC card, giving me enough room for my entire mp3 collection in a player the size of a matchbook.

The player itself is very lightweight, but feels very firm gripped in your hand, and the buttons have a very solid feel when pressed. The clip is non-removable, but probably not a breakage concern like the previous Clip.

Some technical observations:

The Clip+ plays back OGG Vorbis tracks completely gapless. It does not play back mp3 files encoded with LAME gapless (but the gap is extremely small).

The off-pitch playback issues of the original Clip (songs used to play at the wrong speed) are fixed in the Clip+.

Battery life is around the advertised 15 hours. It's not amazing (it trades battery life to have the screen and the slot), but it does last a week of casual listening.

Sound quality is outstanding, better than I ever expected from such an inexpensive player.

FLICKER WARNING: the OLED screen is crisp, but due to how the technology works, the screen must be refreshed like a CRT. Thus, if the refresh rate is too slow, flicker is visible (to those who are sensitive). The refresh rate of the Clip+ screen is very low, and people sensitive to it (including myself) can see flicker.

I am very impressed with this device. I needed something small and light so that I could use it while running or biking, and I couldn't ask for a better product.
Before coming across this, I had purchased the new iPod shuffle, which looks cool and is incredible small, but that is where the pros end for that device. I immediately returned the shuffle when I realized I couldn't use my Shure 530's with them (wtf?).
Then I found out about this awesome player. It obviously fits my need for a small, light player, and the fact that it clips easily and securely to a shirt is great. Now, in order for it to earn a five star rating, it needed to do a lot more than just clip to my shirt, and it far exceeded my expectations:
- Sound Quality: I am amazed at how much better this sounds than my iPod classic. The bass reproduction is the most noticeable difference. Hip Hop and electronic music was always lacking in the bass presence with my old iPod, even when paired with some great headphones. There is no issue with this device. The bass does not sound over bloated or artificial in any way, just clear, bold bass as it sounds out of a home theatre or car. Sound Quality is absolutely top notch. Be sure to rip your music using high quality settings, because the difference is definitely noticeable between highly compressed files and larger ones. Lossless files sound amazing.
- Durablility: Can't speak on this yet. I've only had it for a week. But it seems pretty well built. The only issue is the lack of covering for the micro SD slot. This seems to be the weakpoint and I expect problems with reading micro SD cards before the player itself has any problems
- Battery Life: No complaints here. I took it with me out of town last weekend and still haven't had to charge it. It's got about 50% charge after many hours of listening. This will definitely suffice for me.
- Ease of use: Nothing major enough here to cause me to rate it less than 5. It's not as easy to navigate as an ipod, but the value and other considerations make this easy to overlook.

Overall: I really love this product. At only $70, it is a low risk buy that will definitely prove its value in spades. With 32 gb cards on the horizon (c'mon san disk! Hurry up with em!), you can potentially have a 40 gig player the size of a box of matches. This thing is cool.

I own the Sansa e280 and before that a little round green mp3 player - can't remember the name now. I just looked up the price of the e280 and it is around $200 here on Amazon. I paid under $70 for my 8G Clip+.

The biggest feature for me was native flac. I ran Rock Box on the e280 to get flac and it was pretty good. Having it native and not having to be concerned with the tons of gimmicks in Rock Box makes the Clip+ very convenient to use.

The e280 with Rock Box has tons of features - most I couldn't understand or use. I never played any of the Rock Box games (Doom and many others are included). All of the gadgets like calendar and calculator went unused. The Clip+ is simple. One run though the settings menu and you never have to touch it again. You listen to music, radio and maybe even record some notes on the voice recorder. I'll leave the games to Play Station.

This little Clip+ holds 24 GB of music with the addition of a 16 GB card. The e280 can do the same but you have to load the 16 GB card with music outside the e280. The e280 will play all the music on the card but it will only let you load 8 GB.

Sound quality is very subjective. The e280 sounded good to me. The Clip sounds as good or better. One thing I noticed with Rock Box on the e280 is you can hear a buzz just before a new song starts playing. I think this is the player buffering the next song. It was very noticeable and pretty aggravating. The Clip+ sounds clean. There is no buzz between songs and the quality of the music is outstanding. I couldn't ask for more in this respect.

The e280 was small. At least it felt small until I got my hands on the Clip+. The e280 is something that fits nicely on your belt like a small cell phone. The Clip+ fits nicely around your neck on a chain like jewelry. It is so unobtrusive I forget I have it on. Now the e280 seems cumbersome.

I was concerned the little screen on the Clip+ would be hard to read but it is clear and provides all the necessary information. I wish it would display the clock but it doesn't. This is strange because one of the settings is date & time. Then again, it is a music player. I can read the time on my cell phone.

There are some things that might bug people. There aren't a lot of "cool" buttons to push, features to enable or tricks to play with. It plays music and it does that with excellence. The first time you power up the Clip+ after loading new music it can take some time to refresh the database. This time increases significantly if you have an 8 GB or 16 GB external card installed. But, it only seems to do this after something changes. Turning it off and on without loading anything new or swapping cards is almost instantaneous. Maybe 10 seconds and you are ready to play music.

On the e280 with Rock Box the internal and external memory cards are treated separately. If you want to play back all the music you have to add all the songs on the internal memory to a playlist and then add the songs on the external card. On the Clip+, music on the internal 8 GB and the external card is played back seamlessly. By this I mean the player treats all the memory as a single unit. You load the music separately, but playback is a single collection of music.

The placement of the buttons are fine. There aren't that many of them and after you get used to them you can do things without looking at it. Nice feature if you have it tucked into your shirt.

Here are some of the settings I use. For me it is a good setup. First I turn off the volume leveling. I know that some love this feature but I'd rather hear the music at whatever level it was recorded at. All my music (mostly flac and some mp3) have the volume leveling in the tags. I found when I turned on the volume leveling all the music was reduced in volume. There were no surprise loud songs but things kind of sounded muddy to me. Also, I have the equalizer off (or normal I think). Again, I prefer to just hear the music unmodified. For music sync I use the USB (MSC) mode instead of MTP. I think if you are using Windows Media Player MTP is probably the best selection. I use MediaMonkey to manage my music collection and USB mode works perfectly. I use a nice pair of earphones - Sure SE530. The Clip+ really does these earphones justice. I spent good money on them and I don't think it was wasted.

That's it. Buy the Clip+ and you get an outstanding music player with all the features you need and none you don't at a price that really is too good to be true.

Kudos to SanDisk for supporting the FLAC format! While Microsoft and Apple continue to ignore the best lossless compressed music format, SanDisk has recognized what audiophiles and music traders have known for years. Implementing Replay Gain is the cherry on my sundae. Thanks SanDisk.