Clip Zip review (updated 9/6)

[Veiks96]

How stable is the rockbox for Sansa Clip Zip at the moment? I know it says unstable, but that could mean, that dual boot doesn't work right or that it has a missing icon for usb So is it stable enough for a first time rockboxer. I'm irritated by the playlists on Clip Zip in MSC(they just won't show up on the player)

[CrowdAds]

[BruceBanner]

I'm too chicken shit also lol

[dfkt]

It runs perfectly fine already. I've ditched the Sansa firmware a long time ago.

[Marvin the Martian]

Originally Posted by BruceBanner

I'm too chicken shit also lol

If you're already familiar with Rockbox on your clip+, then it's no problem to do it on the Zip. Just read this post....http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum...58&postcount=1

I was paranoid last year about Rockbox because I had never used it before.....but I jumped in with the Zip pretty quickly and have no regrets.

[WalkGood]

Originally Posted by Veiks96

… So is it stable enough for a first time rockboxer. …

Originally Posted by BruceBanner

I'm too chicken shit also lol

Yes, it is stable enough for a first timer. I can’t say our 13 year old son is a first timer because he still has his v1 Clip rockboxed. He pulled his Zip out of the box, turned it on, switched to MSC, connected to pc and did a manual install. Once disconnected and firmware upgrade was complete, he connected it to pc again in rockbox firmware (since USB is already enabled), loaded his tunes, disconnected and installed his 32GB microSD, refreshed db and hasn’t booted to the OF anymore. BTW he loaded the mircroSD via a card reader while the Clip was charging. Here is a picture of our two Clip Zip’s

As a first timer, I would recommend you read the manual. The Zip manual isn't out yet but you can read the Clip + manual here. All this said, you’re the only one that can decide for yourself, good luck …

[Mikerman]

If you're at all concerned, it is most likely that the Clip Zip port will be made and marked "Stable" in the near future.

[woo]

Not too many people used Sandisk Sansa Clip or latest Clip Zip because we can not buy it easily. I just got one Zip and looking forward to Rockbox it this weekend, luckly I can find many many useful information here!
thanks so much!

[barnayy]

Hi all,

I've just received my Clip Zip after having my faithful Clip+ fail on me. The problem I'm having is that the screen on my particular CZ seems to be of lesser quality than in videos I've seen of the player on Youtube. It looked fine when I first turned it on, and I immediately changed the brightness level to as low as possible (something I do with almost all my electronics under usual circumstances to conserve battery). This made the screen colors look terrible. I changed it back to the original setting (70%) and it still looks bad. I'm not sure if I'm remembering how it looked out of the box incorrectly or if I've damaged something? More specifically, I've noticed that when the player is plugged in on the "Connected" screen the USB cartoon looks extremely washed out, the settings menu is of a much darker purple than in videos I've seen. Am I just being paranoid or is there something wrong with my Zip?

Thanks!

[dz33]

Hello, I've just joined, but have been reading the site for about a month.

After contemplating many different players, I bought two Zips and several SDHC cards to store my music, audiobooks and OTR.
Thanks to the advice I have read here, I re-tagged all files and recently installed Rockbox. I only use the one Zip at the moment, but it is 8GB + 32GB card.

The features I really like so far:
Battery life - I'm getting a full day from a charge which is great.
Fast scrolling text - better for reading OTR episode titles quickly.
Sleep timer - very useful as I often ran my iPod flat when I fell asleep listening at night.
Radio - works well. Not tried recording any yet.
Video - not sure of the practicality, but I did encode a clip with VLC and it looked and sounded quite impressive given the 96 x 96 screen. Was fun to try out.

I read barnayy's post above and took a pic of my Zip charging, I have the screen brightness set at 0, i tried taking a pic set at 7 but it was too bright for the camera. The background is black, and text on my settings screen is white (not purple), perhaps we have different settings/version of Rockbox? I got the latest version a few days ago.

I'm very pleased with the Zip so far, I like some of the demos too (the 'screensavers' I can run when listening to music), flame and starfield especially.

[skip252]

barnayy doesn't mention Rockbox at all so I don't think the screen issue they were talking about involves that. There have been a couple of reports of unusually reddish screens that failed shortly after. That may be the issue here.

I looked at a few Youtube unboxings and other demos and there was so much inconsistency in screen color and brightness I don't think you could use them to tell what the screen should look like in real life. I'd keep a close eye on it and if I saw the screen continue to discolor return it.

[Zipper]

I installed rockbox on my Clip Zip last week and I'm very happy with it.

Basic functions (ie playing music) are rock solid.

The only oddities that I see are things involving entering text (such as for creating playlists - which I don't do on mp3 player itself) and occassional odd behavior in voice recorder.

But playing mp3's works flawlessly.

Since you can dual boot - no reason to be afraid.

But honestly, once I installed rockbox and a skin, I have no need (nor any desire) to use OF.

Rockbox has changed by assessment of the Clip from a 'basic' mp3 player to a 'premium' mp3 player.

Jump on in.

[mikee]

i wish rockbox played a little nicer with pre made playlists though when synced from the computer. Mine never show up and I use mtp mode and sync a playlist file but it just does the music and I don't know an easy way to make playlists on the device. I'm talking about clip+ though I don't own one of these so maybe it's different now

[saratoga]

Originally Posted by mikee

i wish rockbox played a little nicer with pre made playlists though when synced from the computer. Mine never show up and I use mtp mode and sync a playlist file but it just does the music and I don't know an easy way to make playlists on the device.

If you're using MTP mode, you're just sending playlists to the Sandisk firmware. If you want to send over playlists that are accessible to rockbox, you'll need to be using MSC mode (and probably want to be using rockbox for USB rather then the sandisk firmware).

[Latin00032]

I head that the maximum nitrates allowable on the clip plus and clip zip are significantly different. I heard the zip maxes out at around 800kbs versus the clip plus maxing out closer to 950kbs.

Does anyone know how true this is?

Thanks.

[saratoga]

Originally Posted by Latin00032

I head that the maximum nitrates allowable on the clip plus and clip zip are significantly different. I heard the zip maxes out at around 800kbs versus the clip plus maxing out closer to 950kbs.

Does anyone know how true this is?

Not true at all.

[Latin00032]

Originally Posted by saratoga

Not true at all.

OK. Thanks. I was hoping that someone was just misinformed.

[rafaelsantos]

Ok guys I'm really considering adquiring one of these, my question is very simple and i expect also a simple answer:
which one (cz or clip+) to buy to listen mainly hardstyle (my phones are the sennheiser mx 370)?
also consider the price diference please, i mean, even if the cz is better a bit (i mostly care about sound and browse speed) does it pay off to get it or not? (cz -> 56€=73$ ; clip+ -> 41€=53$). Both versions I pretend to buy are the 8gb ones (:
Best regards, any help would be apreciated

[dfkt]

They sound exactly the same, so get whichever one you want.

[BruceBanner]

I have both.

Now i don't know if this is a difference between versions of Rockbox installed (and perhaps someone can confirm), but my cz running the latest build of rb (unstable, but i never had any crashes/issues with it) is DEFINITELY louder than the clip+.
I use a pair of Super Fi 5 IEMs (already considered loud IEMS) and with my clip+ have the volume usually set at 0 (allowing for a gain of +6 for songs that require it). I personally dont like using Replaygain so don't use it.
On the cz I find having volume set at -4 is about the same as the clip+ at 0 (this allows for FAR higher volume should I push it to +6 (which i have yet to do so far on the cz, whereas I did a fair bit on the clip+).

But I say it again, this variance could be something to do with different versions of RB installed on the two devices. I'm not sure what version im running on the clip+ but i think its a 2 releases behind the most recent available. I have just never bothered to update it since getting the cz.

The other difference I find is browsing is a nicer experience with the cz in rockbox (when i set the font to being the tinyest), as i can see more txt than on the clip+ (as well as it being colour).

I have noticed the battery life lasts LESS on cz vs clip+ in my realtime use. I clean for a living so sumtimes I have myself 'plugged in' for 7-8hrs nonstop without a break. clip+ could manage this but the cz can't as easily. I find I have to have brightness quite low on the cz, have backlight set to go off after 5 or 10secs (rather than 15secs i set with the clip+). Tbh I hardly get to enjoy the album art feature of the cz because to simply have the brightness high and backlight on (for any appreciable duration) zaps the battery life too much making the player redundant.

They are both great players. I would be happy to take a thicker or larger clip in the future if it brought about a wicked 30hr battery life and bigger higher resolution screen!

[bertrik]

On October 12th 2011, we increased some of the voltages for the DAC in rockbox to match the voltage settings that the original firmware uses. This also increased the volume, so that probably explains the volume increase you noticed. This applies to all "AMSv2" targets, so to both the clip+ and the clip zip.
This may also have fixed some other minor audio problems, like subtle clicks/"zip" sounds when pausing/unpausing audio (I don't notice them anymore, but I'm not a very discriminate listener anyway).

As far as I can know, the clip zip has a 300 mAh battery vs. a 290 mAh for the clip+, so the clip zip battery should outlast the clip+ battery a bit. I can't explain the difference you see. On the other hand, we haven't really tried to look into clip zip battery measurements or optimisations yet.