Sansa Clip+?

Dissenting voice here; bought one for my ex- for Christmas (we are on good terms...) but two weeks ago the rocker volume switch stuck, now can't adjust the volume at all. Nice idea, but to me it's a little too small and the screen interface is tiny. A tad larger (similar to the 3rd Gen iPod Nano) would've been ideal.

 

Well I got the Sansa Clip Zip today (just bought the 4GB model and a 64GB microSD card), formatted it to FAT32, installed Rockbox on it, and it looks like it's working beautifully.

I wasn't gonna install Rockbox at first, but I found it a PITA to convert all my Apple Lossless into FLAC and keep album art, and all the sorting I had it in thanks to iTunes.

 

The Clip Zip version of Rockbox is pretty mature at this point. There is already a release candidate, so an official release is pretty imminent.

 

I had the same feeling until the day I found out about the "European" volume restrictions. Selecting "Rest of the World" as region solved the problem for me. Not a Rockbox issue thou, just with the original firmware.

 

It said on their website that it was "unstable," although it seemed to work perfectly for me. I wasn't having any success auto-installing at first, so I tried the manual CLI install and had no success there either (command wouldn't execute for some reason). Here I found out that the OFW binary file that the installer asks for was too new, so I had to find the 01.01.18 version and then it worked like charm.

It's just a little difficult to figure out how to shuffle all your songs at first, but I found some advice through Google about how to do that.

Soundwise it doesn't sound any different than the OFW, but I did it primarily because then I didn't have to convert all my ALAC -- > FLAC and AAC --> MP3. I just see it has a LOT of extra settings that allow you to tweak the sound, so I guess if you know what you're doing with all that, it's really worth it.

But like I said, I like having it for compatibility reasons.

So far I'm happy with it. Blows my iPod Touch out of the water as far as music listening goes. Apple really needs to get with the times and allow expandable memory.

 

I also own an iPod Touch that I almost never use. The expandable memory is a great feature and it makes a Sansa player that is a very good value into a player that is a great value IMHO.

 

Between my wife and I we've bought three Sansa Clip+'s, and one developed the volume switch problem you describe. All three are still in service (the problem one is hooked up to a portable stereo in the baby's room and volume doesn't need to be adjusted). Mine is the oldest one and I use it the most heavily, in the car and on the train every day.

 

Really? That's good to hear - my wife got an iPod Touch 5th Generation for Christmas (though actually music is perhaps the least of the uses she has found for it) and I think that the iPod sounds sensational. It's not for me though because all of my digital music is in FLAC, which Apple doesn't support.

I have never done a direct comparison between my Clip+ and the iPod though, I just was pleasantly surprised by the sound of the iPod.

 

Use your ipod earphones on the CLIP,that will give you an idea on sound etc.

I bought new ear phones and it improved a lot for me,with the songs in FLAC,away you go!.

 

When I listen to the iPod, I used the same earphones that I use with Clip+, Ultimate Ears SuperFi 4.

I would never swap the Clip+ for the iPod, but the iPod sounds pretty darn good! Clip+ sounds great too, and IMO is by far the best value in portable music players.

 

I have a Sansa Clip Zip cos it covers Mp3,.wma, aac (for iTunes) and Flac. It's nice sounding play for the money and expandable memory is a great idea.

 

I'm happier dragging and dropping whole folders even though I have iTunes.

 

I drag and drop when I'm loading music on but I think I'm doing something wrong when I want to delete music off of the Sansa because it will tell me that it has no music on it but the disc space is less than it should be when "empty." It's hard to explain and I'm not bothered by it since I found a work around and I only use it for taking walks, flying or taking the train. The worst thing that happened was when it was fairly new to me the language got switched to Russian somehow and boy let me tell you that took some time to work out the puzzle of getting it switched back.
I wanted a player that wasn't Apple and wasn't expensive due to the amount of time I would use it and the Sansa Clip + ticked off all those points for me.

 

I've had several of these players and rate them very highly - I broke the clip off my first one which is a bit of a weak spot.

In terms of sound quality they are superb little mp3 players.

 

Yeah I think with Rockbox installed, it's every bit as good as my iPod Touch. I only say "with Rockbox installed" because then I can play all the same formats my iPod supported, plus FLAC (as I have a couple of those Beatles 24/44.1 remstasters in FLAC).

I wonder how long it will take microSD card manufacturers to come out with a 128GB at an affordable price.

 

I'm not sure it'd be much fun looking through 128GB of music on the tiny clip screen mind you.

 

I have not seen anybody mention the Sansa Fuze™+ MP3 Player It has more onboard memory (16GB) + the use of a memory card. It is a bit bigger in size.
http://www.sandisk.com/products/music-video-players/fuze-plus/

 

I had one of these and returned it - the touch interface is truly awful and as bad as the poorest reviews suggest. The older model seems to be as good as the clip but unfortunately it wasn't available at a decent price when I bought the clip as it was end of life and hard to come by.

 

They are with the times in many ways. They have the cloud for storage

 

Cloud storage is useless to me when I'm on the road and don't have an unlimited data plan on my iPhone though. Also, what about people who don't have iPhones, but want to listen to their music?

 

I've had bad luck with Sansa players. I have owned two different lines of players by Sansa and both crapped out on me after about 6 months.

 

I bought my Clip+ in early 2010 and have used it sporadically until recently when I started using it for my mono tracks through a mono PA/ceiling speakers. The Clip+ just died. I ordered another and a 32 GB card since my experience with the sound was pretty good.

 

That was a false alarm. I think that there was something wonky going on with the firmware. My li'l Clip+ is fine.

 

Something like happened to me, too. I just died after a six or so months. It just died in a middle of one song & wouldn't turn on anymore. Not in several days. I was already prepared to ship it (the guarantee was still in full force) back to manufacturer, but I began to wonder how rather new & little-used thing would actually die. After one week it just accepted to be turned on. After some research, I just wiped all the music files away, reformatted the micro-sdhc-card, and copied new files in. There had been a small error in one file - and in one file only - and playing that file had caused the "death" of the Sansa. However, I still don't grasp why it took a week for the Sansa to recover...

 

Over the past few months I had been transferring files to the Clip+ from my Macintosh computer. I wasn't able to resuscitate it until I connected it with my Windows machine, however.