back to the basics

I was so happy when I saw this little guy in the store that I bought it that very night, about a week ago. I had been afraid that all of the little electronic devices were doomed to suffer the iPhone syndrome, exploding with nonsense features that nobody wants. The 4 GB Sansa Clip is so efficient, both in size and function. There are real buttons and switches for the functions that I use, including scrolling, play, skip, home, menu, volume, and power, with minimal soft-switching, and very few "extra features". When I command, the Clip obeys with almost no lag. The menu is an elegant database that is compatible with ID3 tagging. The screen is well laid out and can be set to a very bright level, but the lettering is too small for my imperfect vision. There are several preset equilizations, and one costume EQ control with five channels.

I don't like the location of the headphone jack and USB jack. The headphone jack is on the side, just above the volume control, so the headphone plug gets in the way. The USB jack is on the other side. The USB jack hasn't gotten in my way yet; I just don't like it there. The USB jack is a standard USBb, like the ones found on many digital cameras. The included USB cable is rather short, at less than a foot.

The battery life is at about 15 hours, as advertised. The battery drains slightly over night, even if the device is powered off.