Review of Sandisk Sansa Clip+ 8GB MP3 music player

Santa delivered a Sandisk Sansa Clip+ 8GB MP3 music player from Amazon.  (The Clip+ will also play audio books and podcasts.)

Note that the Clip+ is not the same as the Clip or the Clip Zip.  Also note that the Clip+ gets much better reviews on Amazon than Sandisk's more expensive MP3 players.

I (David) like the Clip+.  The sound is good, although I can occasionally hear the audio compression artifacts inherent in the lossy MP3 compression standard.  It's easy to operate, cheap ($55 for the 8GB size at Amazon), and small.  Cheaper than an iPod and much easier to use, judging by the struggles a friend has with her iPod.

The Clip+ comes with a quick start guide, in-ear earbud headphones, a mini CD with Rhapsody music service software, and a USB A to mini-B cable.  The headphones sound pretty good, actually.  You use the USB cable to charge the Clip+ from a computer's USB port and to copy MP3 music files from a computer to the Clip+. 

The Clip+ comes from the factory designed to interface with Windows Media Player.  However, if you set the Clip+ "USB Settings" option to MSC then your computer thinks the Clip+ is just a USB memory stick and you simply copy and paste MP3 files into the Clip+'s memory.  The Clip+ defaults to MSC mode if you plug it into a Mac or if your Windows computer doesn't have a recent version of Windows Media Player installed.

You don't need to install or use the Rhapsody software.  MP3 files downloaded from Amazon work just fine.  So do MP3 or FLAC files you rip from your existing CD yourself using the "Exact Audio Copy" software from http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/

Clip+ battery life is rated at 15 hours between charges.

The included quick start guide isn't much help but you can download a complete user manual from the Sandisk website at
http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4303/

The Clip+ does not include a car charger or spare USB A to mini-B cable.  Both are available from the Sandisk store
http://shop.sandisk.com/
under Accessories and Readers > Sansa Accessories.
The car charger is hidden on the second page of results.  Supposedly the Sansa players are fussy about which car chargers they will work with.  The same page has a cable kit for plugging your Sansa player into a home stereo or a car radio.  (Provided your home stereo has RCA input jacks and your car radio has a 1/8 inch (3.5mm) input jack.)

You can expand music storage by inserting a micro-SDHC camera memory card.  These memory cards are available from Walmart, Amazon, etc.  I used a Sandisk Ultra microSDHC "Ultra" 32GB memory card from Walmart and it works great.  If you are in MSC mode then the added storage shows up as a second USB memory stick on your computer.  However, the Clip+ indexes all the music seamlessly.

If you're thinking about an MP3 player then buy the Clip+.  Highly recommended.