In-depth first impressions of 2GB Clip

[redsquare]

I've had mine for just over a day now, and as I found the info posted here previously to be very helpful for me, I thought I'd log on and chime in. As this post got longer, I thought maybe it might be worth a new thread as opposed to a reply to another.

I'll be taking the Clip out on my first run tomorrow (my primary use for it will be wearing it while trail running a few days per week), so I haven't tested it "in the field" yet--just at home. My initial thoughts:

• The sound is very nice--crisp, clear, vivid. The default EQ settings aren't that great, but they never are. At first listen, normal, rock (a more compressed setting) and jazz (pretty sizzly, almost harsh) sounded best, but a quick tweaking of the 5 bands on the Custom setting gave me a stronger sound than any of them--sort of like a loudness control, with better bass and midrange. (I'm listening on inexpensive Philips earclip headphones, which are slightly shy in the bass area. Haven't tried the earbuds that come with the Clip.) The radio sounds excellent by default. Reception seems decent--the primary local stations are loud and clear. The device's volume is good; there are two basic ranges available in the settings--normal and louder--and the 'normal' range is more than loud enough for me.

• The size is nice too. A miniature Zippo lighter is probably the best way to think of it. It's quite light but just barely avoids feeling flimsy. The whole front face of the unit is a glossy, clear plastic, the rest of the body a glossy opaque plastic. The control wheel has a rougher texture, not slick, almost like rubber (but not). The controls and jacks are all pretty tight-feeling (USB and headphone jacks are very tight); as has been mentioned elsewhere, the power slider does rattle ever-so-slightly (not noticeable when in use), but when in the "hold" position, it doesn't move at all.

• The screen, while quite small (which I like), is bright and very readable, and the two colors are good choices. (Again, yet to try it outside in daylight.) You can set the brightness of the display manually; I set it to the minimum setting and it was still plenty bright for me indoors. The control-wheel-ring brightness is constant, but not obtrusive, as the power-saving mode (which you can also control) turns it off within a few seconds of your last button-push.

• Having read discussion about how the device shows up in Windows, how music is managed on it, etc, I was a little nervous about how that would work. But on my system (Dell Dimension 8100 with WinXP Home), it's been smooth as silk--the device shows up as a drive, I can see all the files on it, and the MTP/MSC toggling trick works fine. Dragging & dropping songs onto it works fine, and they automatically get slotted by their ID3 tags. I also had no problem getting it to work with Windows Media Player (v11)--it recognized the player (complete with a little image of it!), and I made up a quick playlist and copied it to the device without issues. Having it sort by folder, in addition to the ID3 tags (song, artist, album, genre) & playlists it currently sorts by, would be handy, but I can already tell that this will work for me.
  
  Note that you can create folders on the device via Windows, and store sound files in them; it's just that the folders aren't displayed when you browse files in the player itself (all the individual files within the folders get sorted out by ID3 tag). So if you want to manage things that way when you're loading from your PC, you still can, but you can't browse them that way on the player.

• It's obviously too soon to tell about battery life. Due to some other work I was doing on my PC, I plugged and unplugged it a few times while first charging it, so I didn't get an accurate idea of how long it took to charge. It already had some degree of charge when I opened the box--it wasn't "dead" by default. I'm less concerned about the time per charge than about the overall battery life. Having had my perfectly good (and so-durable) old RCA Kazoo rendered unusable by broken software (the evil MusicMatch), I'm hoping the "planned obsolescence" of this device is several years away in the future.

• Recording. In my first tests of the voice recorder, I, like another reviewer, found the results to be slightly muffled--good low end but somewhat boxy high end. That's a little disappointing, as I was hoping this would be a cheap tool for basic but crisp field/ambient recordings. As it is, it'll be great for dictation and capturing strong sounds, but probably not as good for capturing the details of ambient noise (perhaps something it was designed to filter, but if so, I'd like to have the option of switching that off--firmware, maybe?). I'll try it out some more, though, and try to EQ the resulting WAV files to make them brighter. One tip: speaking directly down into the mic at close range can add a bit of boominess and breath noise. If you speak "over" the mic (talk with the front of the player facing you instead of pointing the mic toward you), you'll get a more even, natural, pleasant sound. (I'd like to hear anyone else's observations or ideas on mic recording with the Clip.)
  
  The radio recordings I've made so far, however, sound great--just like the source. I expect that the little digital tuner will at times be vulnerable to introducing a bit of digital static, but the test recordings I made from strong local stations sounded excellent.
  
  One observation on the recordings: radio recordings are at 768 kbps/24 KHz, while voice recordings are at 256 kbps/16 KHz. Even with the mono/stereo difference, that voice bitrate seems low--I wonder if that contributes to the boxy sound. Don't get me wrong--the voice recording is smooth and clean (not distorted)--but just not as crisp as the radio.

• The control system & navigation has been pleasant to use so far. Without reading the instructions, I've been pretty easily able to move around, access all the functions and tweak settings. It'll take some more use for it to become intuitive, but it's easy to figure out. For most operations, the correct button to push is pretty logical; I only occasionally feel "stranded". (Hint: when none of the labeled buttons seems to do what you want, try the blank center button.) The home button always takes you to the main menu, and the center button flips through radio presets. There is a pause button (which remembers your position in the song you last listened to, or radio station, after powering off), but no stop button.

• The clip mechanism itself seems tight and quite securely attached to the device, and holds decently firmly to what you attach it to. It's all plastic (aside from the tiny spring), so it can be flexed, but hopefully that won't be an issue. Since it's removable, I'm hoping that replacement clips can be obtained from the manufacturer, or that they (or someone else) will make metal ones available later. I'll be running with it clipped to a sweatband around my bicep, and initial tests of that seem to work well, though that does expand the clip to its widest. It seems fine so far, but I have to say I am a little surprised that the part the device is named for isn't a little more substantial.

• The way I'll be carrying the player, the placement of the volume control (just below the headphone jack) shouldn't be an issue for me. What does seem more vulnerable to me is the USB port--it's open, with no cover. For anyone planning to wear the unit on their left side (which includes me), that faces an open USB port into the wind. It's a very small opening, but I'll be more nervous than usual running in a light rain. Even my old Kazoo had a built-in rubber plug for the port--like the clip, it seems like something that could have been improved just a bit before final launch. Hopefully this thing will be popular enough so that third-party accessories will spring up and compensate for a few things like this.

Of course, the only real test that matters for something like this is active use. Does it sound good in all types of settings, does the clip mechanism hold up well, does the battery hold its charge over time, is it sturdy, does it hold up to the elements, do the controls continue to work for years to come? All those questions are unanswered. But so far, for all its features, its ease of use and compatibility with the PC, and its practical size and built-in clip, it feels like a great value and hopefully one I'll be using for a long time. If not, I'll come back here and complain.

If anyone has questions, I'll be happy to answer if I can.

[tmgeorgo]

I have a couple of questions, if you don't mind.

1. I use my sansa m260 in the car and connect it to my car stereo through the headphone jack, and one of my biggest problems is the sound volume being too low. To compensate, I have to turn the car stereo way up just to hear it. Have you tried using the clip in your car? If so, does it have enough volume to drive the speakers without having to turn the stereo volume all the way up?

2. How do you recharge the device? It only comes with a USB cable, so does it use that? I wonder how long that would take....

Thanks for the rest of the comments, I'm really interested in getting one of these.

[redsquare]

tmgeorgo:

1) I haven't used it in my car and can't do it the way you do, as I don't have any headphone/external-aux jack on my car stereo. I know what you mean, though, because it's the same when I connect my old RCA Kazoo to my home stereo--I have to crank up the volume, which adds hiss. I'll try the same connection on my home stereo with the Clip and see if it's louder than my old player.

2) The device charges via USB only. I charged it while it was connected to my PC, but the quick-start manual says that it can also be charged with standalone USB chargers (the kind that plug into the wall or car-lighter socket). Anticipating that might be handy, I did a little searching and found what look like some good options here (scroll down the page to the Chargers section):

http://www.javoedge.com/reflexeshop/...mp3&column=two

I haven't charged it from dead to full charge yet (I think it'll take me a while to use up the current charge), so I don't know how long the whole process takes.

Hope that's helpful. I'll post again later with my home stereo test, or if anyone else who has a Clip can do the car stereo test, please post.

[sibion]

Originally Posted by tmgeorgo

I have a couple of questions, if you don't mind.

1. I use my sansa m260 in the car and connect it to my car stereo through the headphone jack, and one of my biggest problems is the sound volume being too low. To compensate, I have to turn the car stereo way up just to hear it. Have you tried using the clip in your car? If so, does it have enough volume to drive the speakers without having to turn the stereo volume all the way up?

2. How do you recharge the device? It only comes with a USB cable, so does it use that? I wonder how long that would take....

Thanks for the rest of the comments, I'm really interested in getting one of these.

tmgeorgo,

1. I have used it in my car briefly, I plug it into to a tape adapter (the kind we all used when CD players first came out) and the sound was plenty loud, my stereo was set to 10 or 15 which is about 40% volume (normal listening level for me with CDs, and the Clip was at about 55% volume on the Normal setting and it was plently loud.

2. If you have a newer Motorola phone (RAZR) or BlackBerry device or any other device that uses the mini USB port for charging they all work. My wife has a Moto charger, I have a BB charger and they both charge this device just fine. In fact, I also have a car charger for my BlackBerry and that also charges it just fine. I particularly like any device that uses the standard mini-USB port for charging because I carry one charger and it charges, my phone, MP3 player, GPS puck and bluetooth headset. Standardization is fabulous. You can pick these chargers up for about $10 at a local Walmart or other discount store these days.

Good luck.

SIBION

[lpitt]

I've found that several of my wall chargers are interchangeable. My palm charger and my cowan f2 charger both work with the clip

[tmgeorgo]

Thanks for checking into the car audio and sharing your impressions. It was enough for me to pick up a black 2GB and take it for a spin. The clip sounds great in my car and I really liked the software and the way the player looks, but I thought it was too small (physically, although >2GB would be much better too) for the kind of things I do and decided to return it. I can see how the clip would be perfect for people who want a tiny mp3 player to clip on for the gym, work, etc., but it wasn't the right one for me. I'm going to stick with my m260 for now and see what sandisk comes up with next.

[redsquare]

An update to my original comments about voice-recording quality: After posting a question/request about this on the SanDisk forums (http://forums.sandisk.com/sansa/boar...p&thread.id=69), I got the following reply from the Sansa techs:

You will get 24Khz sample rate for voice recorder in a future update.

So, no idea when that will happen, but that's good news! I've been using the voice recorder a lot already, and this improvement in quality will be great to get. Now I'll just have to keep an eye out for firmware updates. Would anyone with experience with previous Sansa models care to comment on how frequent those updates tend to be?

After a week and a half of using the Clip, I'm still really liking it. Have used it for a few hours while running and doing some random short recordings, and no sign of the battery running down yet.