SanDisk is most commonly known for being a major manufacture of memory chips which probably gave them a head start on having reliable memory space to store all your music. With that background all they had to do was come up with a user friendly interface to navigate the music stored on their memory. They have several models but the SanDisk Sansa Clip is one of their best ultra compact MP3 players and winner of our TopTenREVIEWS Gold Award. It comes in several colors, sleek black, candy apple red, hot pink, and ice blue to match up with whatever your preference is. Also, if 1 or 2GB of space doesn’t cut it and you want to be able to store more songs, the Sansa Clip is available in up to 8GB.
Many people naturally think of Apple’s iPod Shuffle when it comes to super compact MP3 players. Apple makes quality products but they charge you good chunks of your pay check to have them. There is no reason to charge so much for something as simple as a MP3 player which is why there are a few manufactures that are out to change that. Quality at a fraction of the cost is what we all want and SanDisk has provided an excellent example of just that with their SanDisk Sansa Clip.
This MP3 player not only has 2GB of space to load your music onto but has one of the best interfaces for navigating and selecting the songs you want to listen to. No more cycling through every song till you get to the one that you are in the mood for. First of all there is the four-line, dual-color OLED screen so that you can see exactly what you are doing. Just below that is a “home” button that lets you cycle between the main menu and the playback screen. Underneath that is a four-way circular control pad not unlike many that we are all familiar with because of similar devices like cell phones. In the menu screen up and down let you scroll through the different options and then left and right let you go into those options or back out of them to the previous screen. Once your song is selected and you hit the playback screen, up becomes your play and pause button. Left and right are for going to the next or previous songs and down brings up a contextual menu. Up, down, left and right are easy enough for anyone to learn so maybe SanDisk messed up on the volume and buried it deep in the menu or, like many compact MP3 players, doesn’t have volume control? Wrong. On the right side of the player is a rocker for adjusting the volume. Amazingly enough, this MP3 player has nearly a 100dB signal-to-noise ratio which is pretty good for such a compact device. The last button is present on the left side of the player and it is your standard power on and off, as well as standby.
Like many MP3 players, the Sansa Clip comes with FM radio. Every once in a while you just get the urge for something different from your playlist and this feature provides that change. The player provides up to 40 presets as well as an auto scan function so you can listen to all your favorite stations as well as search for new ones to enjoy when you’re out of town. One of most annoying things about radio is that sometimes you come upon a song that you are unfamiliar with but really like so you wait and hope that the DJ will announce the song afterward. When they fail you and never say who the song was by or what it’s called you scramble for a pen and paper to note down a few of the repeated phrases that you remember. Occasionally you get lucky and the song title ends up being one of those but typically you can’t find it and your best bet is to keep listening to that station and hope for a second shot at hearing the song title and artist when it hopefully plays again. Well, the Sansa Clip doesn’t have a direct feed from all the radio stations with a list of the songs played in the last hour but they do provide a great alternative. SanDisk gave us the ability to record those songs right off the air. Now when the DJ plays that or another awesome song and fails to mention before what song it is, you can hit the record and have at least part of the song to help you find out what song it is, if they don’t mention the vital information that will allow us to download it later. Along with radio recording you can record voice to with the built-in mic. This is a great way to make memos to yourself and it’s faster than scribbling a note.
Another great thing about SanDisk’s Sansa Clip is all the support they offer for this player like MP3, WMA (unprotected as well as protected), OGG, FLAC, and Audible files (from Audible .com) like AAX. Along with that it has integrated Rhapsody DNA into it so you can stream Rhapsody Channels.
As we’ve seen, there isn’t a lot that the SanDisk Sansa Clip can’t do and doesn’t have. With that said, you must be assuming that this powerful player is got to be pricey. Well no actually, it’s cheaper than most any other 2GB MP3 player. Quality that’s affordable is exactly what SanDisk accomplished.
