What Would You REALLY Liked To Have Seen In The Clip Zip?

[Kendall]

I don't see the advantage of the low quality LCD. The Clip+ display is clear and does the job of displaying information; to me displaying album art just seems like a gimmick rather than a useful feature. Even if I wanted more than a pure music player, it's not like I'd use a tiny 96x96 screen to look at pictures or play videos.

I'd have bought a Clip Zip if it had significantly improved battery life. That's the main thing I dislike about the Clip+ compared with other MP3 players I've owned. My old Sansa Fuze (and my Rio Carbon before that) both lasted through a full week of travel to work. I just had to remember to recharge them over the weekend, while the Clip+ has usually run out of juice by Thursday. Not the end of the world, but I would pay money for the extra convenience of a longer lasting charge.

As for other features I'd like to see, increased storage is the big one. I've got an 8Gb Clip+ with a 16Gb card, but it'd be nice to have a player with 16Gb internal storage too.

On the fly playlists would be useful too. On my Rio Carbon creating playlists was a bit slow and fiddly with individual tracks, but I often used that feature to add a series of albums/EPs to a single playlist, so that the music wouldn't stop when one ended. It was also useful if I just wanted to shuffle the tracks of a select few albums, or if I wanted to remove particular tracks from a playlist, like the mostly silent "hidden" tracks at the end of some albums. I keep meaning to install Rockbox to see how that deals with playlists.

[CrowdAds]

[Marvin the Martian]

Originally Posted by Kendall

On the fly playlists would be useful too.

There is the GoList, you know.....on both the Clip+ and the Clip Zip.

[McDougal]

1. More battery life

2. Ummmmmmmmm.........I think that's about it .......

[Bob_K]

Originally Posted by McDougal

1. More battery life

2. Ummmmmmmmm.........I think that's about it .......

^^^

+1

[skip252]

Originally Posted by Kendall

I keep meaning to install Rockbox to see how that deals with playlists.

Considering how Rockbox views music files,

4.4.1 Playlist terminology:A playlist! One of the keys to getting the most out of Rockbox is understanding that Rockbox always considers the song that it is playing to be part of a playlist, and in some situations, Rockbox will create a playlist automatically. For example, if you are playing the contents of a directory, Rockbox will automatically create a playlist containing all songs in it. This means that just about anything that is described in this chapter with respect to playlists also applies to directories.

You may want to do that sooner rather than later. It may not be the same as the other onboard playlist capable players you've used but I doubt you've used any that are more versatile.

The extra battery life is just icing on the cake.

[Kendall]

Originally Posted by Marvin the Martian

There is the GoList, you know.....on both the Clip+ and the Clip Zip.

The GoList doesn't really do the things that I'd use on the fly playlists for. The good old Rio Carbon's playlist support was much more sophisticated and versatile.

On the Carbon, every time you played something it created a dynamic playlist that could then be added to and customised. For example, I could be nearing the end of one album, and rather than waiting for it to finish before selecting another, I could queue up the next by appending it to that playlist. I could play all the albums by a particular artist, cut my least favourite tracks, then save that as my "best of whatever-artist" playlist. When I shuffled tracks I could scroll through the whole shuffled playlist, remove unwanted tracks from it, and save it as a new playlist if I wanted to.

Here are some screenshots of the Carbon's playlist support.

Even 5 years on some of the Carbon's features are pretty nifty compared with recent players. Definitely features I wouldn't mind seeing on the Clip, but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for them to be added by SanDisk...

[Marvin the Martian]

Originally Posted by Kendall

The GoList doesn't really do the things that I'd use on the fly playlists for. The good old Rio Carbon's playlist support was much more sophisticated and versatile.

On the Carbon, every time you played something it created a dynamic playlist that could then be added to and customised. For example, I could be nearing the end of one album, and rather than waiting for it to finish before selecting another, I could queue up the next by appending it to that playlist. I could play all the albums by a particular artist, cut my least favourite tracks, then save that as my "best of whatever-artist" playlist. When I shuffled tracks I could scroll through the whole shuffled playlist, remove unwanted tracks from it, and save it as a new playlist if I wanted to.

Here are some screenshots of the Carbon's playlist support.

Even 5 years on some of the Carbon's features are pretty nifty compared with recent players. Definitely features I wouldn't mind seeing on the Clip, but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for them to be added by SanDisk...

In that case, I'd look into Rockbox. I don't know how well its playlisting compares, because I'm not a playlist guy, but it's certainly more versatile than the Sansa firmware in that regard.

[BruceBanner]

Rockbox does playlists very well. Owning a fuze and have not rockboxed it yet? tut tut shame on you

[JK98]

Longer battery life, HD radio, micro SDXC card support, and variable speed playback with automatic pitch correction.

[vittau]

1. Sturdier build, maybe a metal case.
2. Better battery life (as long as it doesn't make it larger).
3. Higher res. screen.

The rest is just perfect.

[Marvin the Martian]

Originally Posted by vittau

1. Sturdier build, maybe a metal case.
2. Better battery life (as long as it doesn't make it larger).
3. Higher res. screen.

The rest is just perfect.

I agree with this.....I wouldn't want it bigger and heavier just to play longer between charges. I have other players rated at 40 hours, 52 hours, 40 hours, and 29 hours.....so having the Clip+ and Clip Zip doesn't cramp my style at all.

[JK98]

The Clip Zip is quite a bit lighter than the Clip+, at 0.6 ounces vs 0.85 ounces. If they increased the weight back to 0.85 ounces, then battery life could be quite a bit longer.

I wonder what they did to make the Clip Zip so light? What is the capacity of the Clip Zip battery?

[Marvin the Martian]

Originally Posted by JK98

The Clip Zip is quite a bit lighter than the Clip+, at 0.6 ounces vs 0.85 ounces. If they increased the weight back to 0.85 ounces, then battery life could be quite a bit longer.

I wonder what they did to make the Clip Zip so light? What is the capacity of the Clip Zip battery?

You might find this interesting....http://www.sizeasy.com/page/size_com...ansa-clip-plus

I don't know the battery capacity.....but I know I'll have better battery life when Rockbox is ready for the Zip.

[bikertrash]

For what my Clip + is, a cheap great sounding player that can use Rhapsody, I thought that an alphabet scroll would make it perfect. Now the Zip comes out with that and album art. I guess the screen isn't real pretty, but I don't look at that when I'm listning to music. I think most of whats wanted would go well on a new Fuze, and hopefully Sandisk will keep the Clip simple in the next update 2 years from now.