SanDisk Sansa Clip + mp3 player review

This sheet can not be read.

With interest in reading how Boomburum describes various funny pieces, however, I never once caught myself thinking that I want to spend my wretched pennies on one of the considered pieces of iron.



All these round speakers and leather laptops are not for normal people, and not even for geeks (there is practically nothing to pick at them anyway). Let's be honest: they are for those who absolutely have no idea what to spend a certain (often considerable) amount of money, because for much less money you can buy things at least as good as performing their functions (even if not with such a design).



I want to talk about one thing for real living people, about an mp3 player, in which:

• NO large color touch screen;
• NO touch control;
• NO camera;
• NO video playback;
• NO cool program to synchronize with the music library on your computer;
• NO wireless interfaces;
• NO beautiful animated screensavers;
• NO games and widgets;
• NO accelerometer and compass;
• NO there is nothing to impress a girl *;
• There are no alternative firmwares with which it would be possible to poke around for a long time and with interest **.

* It is not specifically your girlfriend that is meant, but the average spherical girl in a vacuum.

** This is for now. The work on rockbox is underway, but not very successful so far. Rockbox is already available to download and install. And with it all sorts of games (even Doom!) And programs (for example, a tuner, a calculator, a text editor, and even a picture viewer).

')

As you can see, sheer boredom.

But, you know, this is exactly what I wanted a long time ago.



Once upon a time I formulated for myself the requirements that a good portable mp3 player should satisfy:

1. High-quality music playback;
2. Small size;
3. Battery operation;
4. Simple black and white screen;
5. Buttons (no sensors!);
6. Connecting to a computer as a normal flash-drive (no extra programs!);
7. USB (own) or miniUSB (for wire);
8. Slot for memory cards (SD or miniSD);
9. Flac playback;

But for some reason, electronics manufacturers for many years did not listen to the arguments of reason and shoved a bunch of dead-lying functionality into unhappy plastic and metal boxes. The excessive complexity of the software, bright large screens, smooth animation, video and camera playback did not affect the price for the better. At the same time, the main component - quality (with reservations on portability) music playback, further and further moved to the background.



Of course, it was possible to buy Chinese nouneym and get a flash player for quite ridiculous money. But this is only if you are a fan of Russian pop music, blatnyak, or you simply do not have ears (which, in principle, the same thing).



Everything changed when the company SanDisk, known to us mainly because it produces various memory cards, released the first generation of its Sansa Clip players-clothespins ( its review in Russian ). Little inconspicuous figovinka: cheap plastic, strange ergonomics, not very high volume, small memory, one of the color options (oh, horror!) Stylish pink color - one of those budget players like the most iRiver orphan line or incomprehensible crafts from Transcend (competitor SanDisk about flash drives area).



But this did not prevent SanDisk Sansa Clip from taking the first place in the ranking of a rather well-known site with the ridiculous name anythingbutipod.com, diving along such competitors as the Sony Walkman A720 / A820, Samsung P2, Cowon iAudio D2, Microsoft Zune 120 and a lot of others that did not come down. before the finals (article Top 5 mp3-players of 2008 ).



It was almost he, the Grail, a balm for the tormented heart, but ...

A small amount of memory (1, 2, or 4 GB), especially when listening to flac (this function was added in the latest firmware) did not allow much to roam. There was no memory card slot. It was impossible to get to the file being played through the directory tree (which is fatal if the tags are not registered), the sound control was located too close to the headphone jack (therefore, if the connector on the wire was L-shaped, you had to twist the wire before making it louder or quieter).



And now, finally, the guys from SanDisk did work on the bugs and released a new generation of Sansa Clip players, who received in the title not a proud deuce, but a modest plus sign.

And now, in fact, the very review of the hero of the article.

Dry facts

official website

3d demo on flash

Sizes, mm	55 × 35 × 15 (with clip)
Weight	24 grams
Body material	plastic
Colour	black, blue or dark red
Type of	flash
Screen	OLED, 1 inch, 4 lines
Internal memory	2, 4 and 8 GB
Memory card slot	microSDHC (up to 32 GB)
FM radio	there is, memory on 40 radio stations
Dictaphone	there is
Audio format support	mp3, WMA, WMA (DRM), OGG, FLAC, Audible, WAV
Tag support	ID3v2.4 (with Unicode support), there is support for Replay Gain
Playlist support	there m3u
Interface languages	from English, Spanish and French to Arabic and Hebrew, including Russian (31 languages ​​altogether)
Modes of operation	MTP (Media Transfer Protocol), MSC (Mass Storage Device)
Battery	built
Operating time from one charge	15 hours
Connecting to a computer via mini-USB, charging through it
Equipment	player, headphones, USB cable — mini-USB
Prices *	$ 39.99 for a version with 2 GB $ 49.99 for a version with 4 GB $ 69.99 for a version with 8 GB

* Prices are from the official site, you can buy cheaper.

Appearance, ergonomics.

The first impression is deceptive - the player seems too small, and the clip is disproportionately large (almost the entire back cover), from glamor traces upon careful examination only a glossy front panel was found (and here it wasn’t enough!). In general, the trick is rather unsightly in appearance.



The menu is somewhat illogical and often requires unnecessary actions, although there were no problems with mastering even with my eighth-grader cousin. Get used pretty easy.



Plastic is quite soft and after a while wearing the player in my pocket, I found on it a shallow scratch. However, for me it is not critical.



The clip is really convenient: it is securely fixed on the clothes (from pants to jacket) and leaves no traces behind. The player is comfortable to wear everywhere, from pocket to collar T-shirts. The weight is so insignificant that it is almost not felt. Very convenient for those who like to run with music. For all athletes have the opportunity to order a pocket on hand.



Complete headphones are not bad for complete headphones, but still very complete.

Sound

I listen to this player on headphones Sennheiser IE8. The sound is good (subjectively better than that of the Cowon iAudio D2), but it does not reach my Kenwood HD20GA7 (but it wins with only one gate in functionality).



The sound is clear, very detailed, but the volume margin is not very large. Although I never listened to him at the maximum, some Sansa headphones will not be able to shake for sure. In addition, in the default settings, the maximum level is set very quietly (which, however, is easy to fix). The most suitable for the player will be headphones type IEM (in ear monitor), dynamic or reinforcing - choose for yourself.



Equalizer is monstrous, it’s better never to include it. Both presets and manual settings transform the sound into some kind of creepy mess, then buzzing, then whistling.

Support for formats, interaction with a computer, firmware functionality.

Of course, mp3. As for flac, neither cue nor embeded cue are supported, so you have to translate whole images into tray cues. The rest of the supported formats can be described without need because of their non-proliferation, I just want to mention the support of the Audible format, in which audiobooks are distributed. The format allows you to adjust the speed of speech of the narrator, and the more I know nothing about it. I don’t like audiobooks (I prefer the text), and I haven’t seen one such file. Especially I want to say about the support of Replay Gain - you do not have to change the volume from song to song, if the tags are pre-recorded levels of RG.



In the settings you select how the player is presented to the system. MTP format - for systems where Windows Media Player 10 or higher is installed. The player is presented to the system as a portable device, it can interact with the library and WMP playlists. The MSC mode is a trivial USB flash drive, two removable drives (own memory and a card) appear on the system, on which you can wield the usual file manager. Naturally, I chose the second option.



After you change something in the file system, or after you insert a memory card into the slot, the player scans the tags of all files (the larger the total file size, the longer this process takes, sometimes up to two minutes). Fortunately, this does not happen every time you turn it on.



You can browse the library by artists, albums, songs and genres (information is taken from the tags), the downloaded tracks are highlighted as a separate item, and (hooray!) Navigation through folders is highlighted. Russian font is pleasant in appearance and does not look alien.



Radio. Radio like a radio, catches well. Navigating radio stations is somewhat inconvenient. You can record radio broadcasts. I never wrote it, so I don’t know in which format. I can’t say anything more because I don’t listen to the radio.



Dictaphone. There is. Writes well. Why do I need - I do not know.



There is such a menu item as Slot Radio. It means that you buy a thousand tracks on a microSD card at once and carry your radio with you. In our realities, the thing is more than useless.

General conclusion, pros and cons.

Anyway, the SanDisk Sansa Clip + series has no analogues yet. Despite the fact that the sound cannot be called uncompromising, better quality from portable devices can be achieved only from Kenwood's red-booked players on hard drives (which are much larger and much less convenient), player + portable amplifier bundles (there is also little pleasure to carry is with yourself), portable audio recording devices (this is for maniacs, and you would see their sizes!) and vintage CD-Audio walkmans (which is generally for maniacs from maniacs). Nearby are combines from COWON, Samsung, Sony and Apple, but all is slightly behind.



So in fact, there is nothing to directly compare with, especially if we consider the weight, size and price.



Main advantages:

• Sound;
• The size;
• Price;
• Flac playback;
• Connect as a flash-drive;
• Slot for memory cards.

Minuses:

• Minor flaws in ergonomics;
• Cheap plastic;
• No cue and embeded cue support;
• Not a very large volume margin;
• Disgusting equalizer.
• As it turned out, the clip breaks off very easily, so you need to be careful with it.

Z. Y. Sorry for the wall of text.

Z. Z. Y. I would have put it on the “iron” blog, but I don’t have enough of this thing, which is impossible to talk about.

Z. Z. Z. Y. Someone will say that not enough pictures will be right, but it seems to me that the link “3d-demonstration on flash” completely exhausts all questions about the appearance.