Hey folks, Valkor here. Continuing our efforts to finish the year off strong, we're gonna take things over to the tech side. Since CES 2006 I've covered San Disk products, but only at CES, never have we had the chance to crack open their products in the Val-Cave. Well that time is over as the folks at San Disk have sent over one hell of an MP3 player; it's small, it sounds great, and it fits anywhere on your person… if you're fully dressed. I give you the Sansa Clip+ along with SlotRadio micro SD.
Let's start with the Clip+; aesthetically its super small, has all your basic buttons: Play/Pause, fast-word/next/right, reverse/previous/left, on the right is a power on switch, flick it down and it acts as a hold (but you won't need it and I will tell you why later). You have your standard headphone port, a mini USB jack and a very, very basic LED display.
Power it on and it first refreshes any new music you might have downloaded onto it or if you have SlotRadio. Navigating the menu is quite simple, you'll be scrolling and rocking to your tunes in no time; again it's pretty basic and easy to get into. But other than listening to SlotRadio and MP3 tunes (which you're not just limited to: WMA, Secured WMA, and WAV. Sorry OGG and FLV peoples) you can also listen to FM radio or do voice recording.
Now let's talk SlotRadio. Basically it's a mini SD card you insert in the Clip+ and acts as a virtual radio (or satellite radio) station where you get to listen to music pre-installed on the device. You can skip ahead, but you cannot rewind, plus you get small breaks in between some songs. The SlotRadio given to me was Rock and I had the choice of 80's, 90's, chill out, classic rock, hard rock, workout, and alternative. There's plenty of songs on the chip and good ones too such as Beck, U2, Tears for Fears, Duran Duran, Steely Dan, System of the Down, Anthrax, Rolling Stones, Elton John, Bryan Adams, No Doubt, Fall Out Boy, Elvis Costello and many, many more. And if rock is not your thing there's also Country, R & B, Classical, and Oldies to name a few. And now on with the review.
The Bang:
I stated before that the Sansa Clip+ is easy to use and believe me it is. Loading the music is as simple as drag and drop or you can use Windows Media player to synch it over. But what puts the Clip+ on the frickin map is the sound, which is beyond amazing. I mean for such a tiny machine, how in the blazes did they pack in that kind of sound? Bass is rich, quality is clear and crisp, from the lowest bit rate to the highest, sound is incredibly BIG. Don't get me started with SlotRadio; the files are crazy small, but the quality is better than my highest bit rate MP3s. Now about the hold button and why you won't need it; the function buttons are stiff enough, but not too stiff, that no matter what you won't accidently hit a button causing it to stop or skip to the next song. Honestly I didn't even know it had a hold button for the first couple weeks of use. So overall an awesome little player with big sound, yea I'm with that.
The Slack:
N/A
San Disk, I am impressed with the Sansa Clip+. I mean I've seen mini MP3 players before, but none that has ever come close to sounding as good as this one does. With the many varieties of portable audio players on the market I highly recommend the Sansa Clip+ 1) for portability and 2) great sound and really that's all you need. The Clip+ comes in different colors and sizes from 2gig to 8gig and is available now. Out of TOV 5 stars I give the Sansa Clip+ 5 stars and it's been Valkor tested and TOV approved.