The Sansa Clip: Good quality and features for the price

If you want a cheap MP3 player with a display that's not an iPod, this is a great alternative. It's compact, easy to use, and nice to look at. It also charges through the USB port on your computer, so it doesn't eat batteries.

The Clip is a very basic MP3 player. It has all the functions and buttons you'd expect on an MP3 player. It's nothing extra fancy, but it works perfectly well. The LED screen is excellent -- clear and easy to read. The circular button that contains the play and pause buttons has a ring around it that lights up when you turn it on, making it easy to see in the dark. It's about 2 1/4 inches tall by 1 3/8 inches wide. It's half an inch thick without the removable clip on the back. With it, it's about 3/4 of an inch. It's very lightweight...if you have it clipped onto your body, you pretty much forget it's there.


Sound: The clip has excellent sound. It's much clearer than most of the early low-end MP3 players that I tried, especially the earlier Sansa models.


Loading music: Getting songs onto the Clip is a basic drag-and-drop thing, which I find easier than iTunes or any other programs. It doesn't take long at all -- you just move your MP3s or WMAs from your hard drive onto the removable drive that appears on your desktop, and they transfer over.


Compatibility -- a word of warning: if you have a Mac, this might not be the best idea. My first one froze up while trying to refresh the database, and the one I got after taking it back did the same thing. I eventually got it going by searching the Internet for the firmware (since the ridiculous Sansa updater on their Web site wasn't working for me), plugging
it into a PC and updating it, THEN going back to my Mac and going about my business. It was a huge pain, but once I got the updated firmware, I've had no problems. My previous Sansa player worked just fine with the Mac, but it was more low-tech than this one.

How it's held up: I've now had the Clip for over a year, and it's still working fine, which is more than you can expect for some inexpensive MP3 players. It still looks brand-new, despite the fact that it's been tossed into handbags and laptop cases consistently. There are no scratches on the screen (or anywhere else on it), and no dead pixels or anything. I'm very impressed with the exterior appearance...I figured it would look awful by now. The headphones still work fine, too -- I had planned to replace them with some higher-quality ones but never got around to it.

The only problem I've noticed that didn't seem to happen in the beginning is that sometimes when I turn it on and try to get music going, it starts scrolling through all the songs rapidly, almost like it has a scan or seek feature turned on, but as far as I know, it doesn't. If I turn it off and then back on, I usually don't have the problem the second time. It's a really strange problem, but it's not that bothersome in the long run.

Other features:
Radio: One of the Clip's nice features is an FM radio. Reception is solid, and you can program up to 40 preset stations.

Voice recorder: Works decently. It's not something you'd want to use as a primary recorder if you need it very often, but it's functional and would be good as a backup if you need it for work purposes or something.

Earphones: I wasn't that impressed with them. The player itself has great sound, but the earphones feel cheap and are a little uncomfortable in my ears. I'll probably replace mine with some nicer ones pretty quickly.

After using the Sansa Clip for a year, I'm still pretty fond of it, and don't have any desire to replace it quickly. However, I have discovered a couple of things I don't like.

First of all, sometimes when I plug it in it doesn't seem to want to charge fully. It'll charge a little, but in a short amount of time the battery's low again. At a full charge, it seems to last 5-6 hours, but I can usually only get it to build up about an hours worth of charge. I have this problem while using it on Macs and PCs, but it seems worse with Macs. I'm starting to wish it just took regular batteries so I wouldn't have to worry about whether it's charging or not.

Second, you can't play music while it's charging. I know most people can play music directly off their computer if they're at their computer, so it doesn't seem necessary. But I like to charge it off my work computer, and I'd like to be able to listen to it at the same time.

If you have an older Sansa MP3 player, is it worth the upgrade? If you can get it for the right price, I would say yes. I have a Sansa M230, and it's still perfectly functional, but the Clip has much better sound quality. It's also less bulky, has a better screen, and is more attractive if that's important to you.

Price: I got the Clip for $35 as a Black Friday deal. For that cost, it's awesome. I'm not sure if I'd pay over $50 or $60 for it, based on the compatibility problems I've had and the various glitches I've read about while searching the Internet for ways to solve my issues. If you can't find a good deal, you might be better to hang onto your old MP3 player a little longer.