SanDisk Sansa Clip 1GB

I've wanted an MP3 player for years, but could never justify spending more than about £30-£40 on one; An iPod was out of the question.

Then I read other reviews of this little thing, and bought it; not just for the price (only £25) but because of the sound quality.
And it _is_ small. The whole package is only about the size of a cigarette packet, and that's with a manual, ear-buds and a mini-CD.

The player itself ...
...even thinner if you remove the attached clip.

The player has a sliding on/off switch on the left-hand side, and this switch can also be moved into a "hold" position - effectively a keypad lock - so the Clip cannot be accidentally be switched back off (or on).

The display is not a glamorous 320x240 colour screen, but at this price you can't expect it.
Instead, it's a 4-line organic LED display - top line ... more

I've wanted an MP3 player for years, but could never justify spending more than about £30-£40 on one; An iPod was out of the question.

Then I read other reviews of this little thing, and bought it; not just for the price (only £25) but because of the sound quality.
And it is small. The whole package is only about the size of a cigarette packet, and that's with a manual, ear-buds and a mini-CD.

The player itself is tiny - about the size of a matchbox. it's even thinner if you remove the attached clip.

The player has a sliding on/off switch on the left-hand side, and this switch can also be moved into a "hold" position - effectively a keypad lock - so the Clip cannot be accidentally be switched back off (or on).

The display is not a glamorous 320x240 colour screen, but at this price you can't expect it.
Instead, it's a 4-line organic LED display - top line yellow, the other 3 blue.
The circular control-pad is also illuminated with a blue LED ring (though thankfully only for a few seconds).
With this control pad, you can choose Music, Settings, or Voice recording (this model doesn't have the FM radio), and navigate the menus.

There's also a small Home button (with a house logo printed above it) which takes you directly to the top-level menu.
Pressing [Left] from here takes you to the display of the current song.
From there you can press the centre button to see a graphical display of sound levels, just like the same pointless displays on cheap stereos.
It's useful I suppose if you can't tell whether the music is *really* quiet or whether your ears are playing up.

Holding down the centre button for a couple of seconds add the current track to a GoList - a one-off playlist that you can create on the fly from the player itself.

The sound quality is very good, although it is my first MP3 player, so I don't know what the competition is like.

The obvious competitor to this player would be the iPod Shuffle.
Now the new Shuffle looks cool, but is more expensive that the Clip, and has no screen.
Because of the screen, the Clip can have navigation controls, Album/Artist/Song selection, EQ, and a battery life indicator, none of which (obviously) are available on the Shuffle (or the Zen Stone).

The packaging also includes a USB cable for attaching to a PC.
Thankfully the Clip uses a standard mini-USB connector (like many cameras and other devices) so if you find the supplied cable a little too short, you can use another. It also means you can use a standard USB charger, if you already have one.

Plugging the Clip into a PC makes the Clip's memory appear in My Computer under "Sansa Clip 1GB". You can copy music on there using the Sync feature in Media Player, or by copying the files onto the clip directly.
One possible source of confusion is that there are two ways to connect an MP3 player to a PC: MSC and MTP.
The Clip can use either mode (as can Media Player) but files copied in one mode are not visible (from the PC) when connected in the other.
My advice: choose one or the other (MTP or MSC) and stick to it.

A few words of warning

First, the Clip does not come with a charger.

For me this was no problem - I already have an Aliph Jawbone, which comes with a USB wall-charger; it produces the 5V (like all USB chargers should) that the Clip needs.
And in any case, I use a PC often enough that I wouldn't have a problem leaving it on for 2-3 hours to charge the Clip.

But some people may find this inconvenient.

ID3 Tags

Some MP3 players show a folder/file view, so that you can group your tracks into folders, and play the one you want.

The Clip doesn't work this way.
You can arrange your music into folders on the Clip's memory, but the Clip itself doesn't display that arrangement. It sorts everything into artists, albums and genres, and that's how you browse your music on the player.
To do this properly, your music needs to be tagged with the correct artist/album/title/tracknumber info, otherwise your music will disappear into an album with the catchy title of "Unknown".
If you're converting the music in your CD collection,
Windows Media Player will generally Do The Right Thing, but if you use other sofware, or you have acquired your music by dubious means, then you may experience problems.

The upshot is that you will have to get used to the idea of tagging your music.
You will also have to decide which software to use for this task.
You can use Windows Media Player, but the preferred choice seems to be a free program called MP3Tag.

Remember, at least you can browse your music on this player - with other leading brands you'd have to play whatever's there.

To be fair to Sandisk, they do supply firmware updates, and they have a dedicated Sansa website with a very active forum.
In that forum there are very vocal demands for Sansa to implement folder browsing, but the complexity of a whole new user interface isn't just a 5-minute job.

Now I'm a techie spod so I'm comfortable with all this. I actually enjoy it, geek that I am.
But I appreciate that many people will be thoroughly baffled by this topic.

If parking things in folders really matters to you, and you can't be bothered with all the technical noodling, then you may be better off with a different player.

But techies like me love this stuff, and will also love the fact that you can apply firmware updates without turning the device into a brick.
(Sony Ericsson and Tom Tom, are you listening?) 

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