Question about battery life

[dford3772]

I listened to about 3.5 hours of audiobook yesterday and noted that the battery indicator has gone down almost a fourth which seems a bit excessive unless it will simply go down slower from now on. In powering off and on I'm wondering if I'm draining the battery by the method I've used. If I just press pause the device powers itself down in a few seconds (goes dark). If I come back in a short time, I can press the center button and the Clip comes back on and if I then hit pause again it begins to play. Should I be using the power switch off/on every time I stop the device instead of pause? Once again, Sandisk directions are in short supply. Thanks, Donna in Arkansas

[CrowdAds]

[RCM]

Originally Posted by dford3772

I listened to about 3.5 hours of audiobook yesterday and noted that the battery indicator has gone down almost a fourth which seems a bit excessive unless it will simply go down slower from now on. In powering off and on I'm wondering if I'm draining the battery by the method I've used. If I just press pause the device powers itself down in a few seconds (goes dark). If I come back in a short time, I can press the center button and the Clip comes back on and if I then hit pause again it begins to play. Should I be using the power switch off/on every time I stop the device instead of pause? Once again, Sandisk directions are in short supply. Thanks, Donna in Arkansas

That's probably the reason why the battery is going down fast, when you are not going to use it for a while turn it off

[FreeZ5]

Unlike other players, the Clip has an off switch rather than holding down the pause button. I have had mine almost a month, and haven't used it that much, but it seems very reasonable in battery life. I used it for about 3.5 hours on a drive to the airport on Tuesday. I used it for most of a 4.5 hour flight on Wednesday. Today (Sat) it shows as half charge left.

Steve

[kukrapok]

Battery life is as expected here, at least according to the specs (Clip 2GB M350 w/ firmware 1.01.11F then 1.01.11A). I played radio and .mp3 (at different bitrates but mostly >160), display fading to black after 15sec and going auto power-off after 2min, volume <1/4, EQ always on (for extra reducing volume) ~1h every day for 10 days and I'm recharging it for the 1st time.

[Kilgore Trout]

Originally Posted by dford3772

I listened to about 3.5 hours of audiobook yesterday and noted that the battery indicator has gone down almost a fourth which seems a bit excessive unless it will simply go down slower from now on. In powering off and on I'm wondering if I'm draining the battery by the method I've used. If I just press pause the device powers itself down in a few seconds (goes dark). If I come back in a short time, I can press the center button and the Clip comes back on and if I then hit pause again it begins to play. Should I be using the power switch off/on every time I stop the device instead of pause? Once again, Sandisk directions are in short supply. Thanks, Donna in Arkansas

Take a look at Settings > Power > Auto Power.
The manual doesn't really explain what this setting is for, but it is a power saving feature that sets a count down timer that controls how long the Clip can be left in the Paused state before it automatically turns itself off. You'll find that you can change this setting from 30 seconds up to 60 minutes. I would recommend a setting of 5 minutes or less. Most people will forget that they've paused the player after a few minutes and the battery will continue to run down for no reason. You also have the option to turn Auto Power OFF. If you've set Auto Power to OFF and then use the Pause control, the Clip will continue to run until you remember to turn it off or until the battery is completely depleted. Just off hand I can't think of any reason why Auto Power should ever be set to OFF.

[PromisedPlanet]

Originally Posted by Kilgore Trout

Just off hand I can't think of any reason why Auto Power should ever be set to OFF.

One may want to pause the player for longer than one hour, then start listening again without having to wait for the Clip to power up.

[Mikerman]

It's such a quick boot-up that I'd rather save the battery power, as well as avoid the likelihood that I'll forget that the player is still on and draining power, especially as there's no easy indication that the player is on.

[Elysian]

Also, the battery power indicator might be confusing you a bit. It only shows the battery life at about 4 levels. In other words, it doesn't go down steadily as the battery drains; it jumps down 1/4th of the way at a time.

[kukrapok]

Here I see 5 levels:
- full (full bar)
- 3/4 full
- 1/2 full
- 1/4 full
- empty (empty bar), lasts enough to play several songs.