SanDisk Sansa Clip+ 8 GB

Do you remember the old days? The time when your only chance of listening to music on the move was to carry your stereo around with you, taking all its weight in your shoulders, the stereos speakers booming out your personal choice of music whilst annoying everyone around you.
Then came the personal walkman, starting with a tape that usually chewed up when you moved, then they gave us the CD version, which jumped more times than a kangaroo on hot sand.
So when they realised that the tapes and CD’s weren’t that much of a bright idea they came up with an idea that would allow people to move about in there day to day lives, going to the gym, running along the road, basically doing what they wanted whilst listening to their choice of music without it jumping or snagging, that idea was in fact the MP3 player.

So as the MP3 player became more and more popular they seem to become smaller and smaller, yet still managing to hold more and more songs.
And it is one particular MP3 player that I got my hands on which is so small yet offers so much. That MP3 player is in fact the San Disk Sansa clip which has an 8GB capacity, although it does come in several GB capacities.

What does it look like..?

It’s tiny and I mean tiny, being approximately 55mm high by 35mm wide and 15mm deep, weighing in at about 25grams, about the same size as a matchbox, (you must have seen the pictures), so carrying it around is no trouble at all, in fact, there’s a chance that you may even lose it if your not too careful.

On the top there is the on/off button, then on one side there is a mini USB port so that it can connect up to a PC, there’s also the volume control.
On the other side there is the micro SD card port and the earphone socket, which is a 3.5mm standard socket so that you can use your favourite earphones.

It has a few controls with some doubling up so that the buttons are as few as possible, with these control being on a curser type button which is on the front, just below the little screen. This cursor not only controls the play, pause, fast forward, rewind etc, plus it doubles as the menu selector, menu navigator and others.
Just above this cursor there is the nice little screen, which is small yet manages to display the information perfectly well indeed so that you know what’s playing and such things as how much battery power you have left.

On the back end there is a clip which is stronger than it looks, fitting easily onto a belt or even shirt collar, with a grip that seems stronger than a drunk holding a bottle of 8 year old malt whiskey.

That’s it, it looks simple and it is even simpler to use.

How do you use it ..?

Firstly, you will need certain requirements on your PC for when you want to add or remove tracks, such as Windows XP SP2 or higher, Linux or Mac 10.3 or above, internet access for updates and downloads, a USB port for actually connecting the player to your PC and Windows Media player 10 for sorting out your tracks on your PC before transferring.

Then once you’ve charged it up, either by using the mains charger or plug it into your PC with the USB cable, you then transfer your tracks, which is done using the USB cable. At this point I killed two birds with one stone and transferred tracks whist charging it up using the USB method. It can play most music formats, such as MP3, WMA, Ogg, Flac and WAV

Anyway, once the tracks are on it is a matter of scrolling through the option, which is done using the front cursors, for example, pressing down until you get the option you want, then pressing across until you find the track/radio station you’re after.
Then press play and you’re done, so long as you’ve plugged in your earphones that is, otherwise you won’t hear anything as there is no built in speaker.
Luckily you can use any 3.5mm jack earphones, I use my own as I didn’t like the ones that came with this player, finding them a bit too fiddly in my ears, getting irritated as they constantly dropped out of place, so I have the bud type that I can ram deep into place.

It has the standard MP3 player options for sorting and finding your tracks, you know the ones, by artist, album, genre etc, and even recently added, which can make life a bit easier for when you’re in a particular mood for a certain type of music.

It has a built in rechargeable battery which, on a full charge, should last a good 12 hours of continuous playing with no loss of sound, (remember back when the music on the tape cassette playing ones would slow right down when the batteries were running low on power?)
The 8GB of internal storage is capable of holding thousands of songs, all in one place, plus you can insert extra storage in the form of a micro-SD card, which slots into the little port on the right hand side. I think this can take up to a massive 16GB SD card which is more than enough space for a cracking music collection.
Just think, 1GB of storage can hold something like 250 standard size MP3 format tracks so therefore the internal memory can hold about 2000 tracks, and then with a 16GB SD card you’re talking another 4000 tracks, that 6 thousand tracks all in one tiny little place. And as it is only a music player so there’s no real need to worry about filling the memory up with video files as it simply won’t play them.

It comes in a few colours, blue, black, which I have, and what I can only call a very dodgy brown/purple/dark red looking colour
It hasn’t got a built in speaker so you do need earphones to listen to the music.
And it also has a built in 40 pre set station radio with the earphone cable acting as an antenna, giving you even more options in the music world.

In all, this is a fine little music player that doesn’t cost a kings ransom, it’s small yet packed with more guts than a feather weight boxer in a heavy weight fight, and with the built in microphone you can use it as a voice recorder too.
The sound quality is great, although this does depend on the earphones and the quality of the tracks that you put on it, but if you use your own earphones then the sound quality is pretty flawless indeed.

As for the price, well this sells for around the £25.00 region for the 8GB one, but prices do vary according to the GB size you want, but for 25 quid you can‘t go wrong.

note

on the 'video quality' option i have put 'not helpful at all/very complicated, this is due tot he fact that this player has no video feature and the question ciao option is not given by ciao. so ignore that part please