SK is newb

Just 2 days ago I got myself a Sansa Clip 2GB Digital Audio Player. Well, why just 2 gigs you might ask. The simple answer – that’s all I need. I don’t always need to always have all my music with me all the time. I’m more than satisfied with just a few favourites that I don’t mind listening to over and over again.

On to the device. The Clip is small. Seriously small. Think of a small device that fits your palm, and cut it by half. It’s that small. The pictures do it no justice. It’s that small. But it is packed with plenty of features. This isn’t a full fledged review, so I’ll just cover it in general.

Design:

The current trend seems to be to immitate the controls of a certain wildly popular DAP. Immitation is surely the sincerest form of flattery.

The Clip has a 5 button setup arranged in a circular fashion, with a global modeless Home key situated to the top-right part of the setup. The circle D-pad, in typical “Sansa” style has a blue LED backlight. The backlight is bright enough for operation in the dark, but unfortunately you cannot adjust the brightness of the wheel

Above the backlight is the 2 colour (yellow and blue) 4 line OLED screen. It is bright enough to read in the dark, but like other OLED screens will become almost unreadable in direct sunlight. Screen brightness is adjustable through the Settings menu.

The Clip itself is fully made of plastic. It feels a kind of “cheap” plastic but it seems to be durable enough for slight mishandling.

One of the things that I personally did not like was the placement of the headphone jack. It is places at the top right corner of the unit which feels very uncomfortable to hold and use, and comes in the way of the volume controls if you have a L-shaped headphone plug. Ideally they should have switched the USB and the headphone jack or placed it at the bottom or the top.

Interface:

The interface is quite intuitive. I’m used to the Sony Walkman interface and felt right at home with this interface. Just some minor difference were present which anyone can learn quite quickly.

Some people might be worried that being so small may have adversely affected the user friendliness of the Clip, but set your worries aside, because unless you have really huge fingers you’ll be perfectly fine. It has the (now) standard 5 buttons plus a home button. For all those of you who really hate a certain Cupertino based company for not having modeless volume buttons, this tiny little player has it, so rest assured that you can change the volume anywhere, anytime and blindfolded.

In the Music menu you have the standard Artist/Album/Playlist view, which nowadays all DAP seem to feature. Along with this, you also have the ‘podcast’ and the ‘Audiobooks’ option in this menu. Music, podcast and Audiobooks are treated as 3 separate entities.

Music has all the standard options like shuffle and repeat. The player supports OGG and FLAC as well, along with the ubiquitous MP3. I have not really tested gapless playback, but the friendly folks at abi and Sansa Forums say it does not do gapless playback.

The podcast and Audiobooks menu have this nifty resume feature, in which you can resume playback of the audiobook/podcast you were listening to. Note, I dint say “last listening to”, but “listening to”. Yes, you can have multiple audiobooks and podcasts going on and pick up just where you left off. This is one of the features that sold me on this device(or rather sold this device to me ).

In the Radio version of Clip, there is a standard radio tuner. As much as I’d like to praise it, it falls flat on its face. The tuners is average at best as compared to my Sony player (God knows how those Sony people make radio receivers so powerful and clear, but then again that has an all metal body). The reception is good only in open areas. The Clip features radio presets, along with Radio recording. I have not tried recording from the radio yet.

It also has a voice recording feature. It isn’t all that great but works decently enough – passable. It records in WAV format.

In the Settings menu, you can find a 5-band EQ that has 5 equalizer presets and a custom 6th preset to tailor it to your liking. There’s also sleep and power timers and a host of other options.

Sound Quality:

Now, we come to the SQ of the player. It uses a SoC (System-on-a-Chip) manufactured by Austrian Microsystem AS3525 (which really doesn’t matter to us). OK, but how does it sound? I’m not an audiophile, but I do know bad playback when I hear one. But, you’ll have to chuck the bundled earphones for a better one.

Well, for a casual listener, it sounds very good. I’ve had a Sony NW-A608 before this (which was also a 2GB DAP), and this one does sound as good as that. Yes, I’m going to be bold enough to say that it sounds very good but then again SQ is subjective.

Battery Life:

Sandisk has rated the Clip for 15 hours of playback. I have not yet got that much time to test it but by the general patterns of my usage, I’d say around 12-13 hours of playback should be achievable. It maybe less compared to the current crop of players, and that is my only gripe.

Overall Thoughts:

Overall, I would highly recommend this to anyone who wants their first player, or a cheap small player. The low cost and the great sound quality makes this a great bargain and a lesson that the bigger companies (I’m looking at you, Microsoft, Apple and Sony) can surely learn.

I bought this for Rs. 2350/- which roughly translates to around $50. I’d call that a great bargain for a branded (ie. a non-Chinese) 2GB Digital Audio Player with great sound quality and a nifty set of features.