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What is the difference between Sony Walkman F886 and SanDisk Sansa Clip Zip 4GB? Find out which is better and their overall performance in the MP3 player ranking. Sansa Clip Plus and Clip Zip recovery images. Downloads release dev builds extras themes. Documentation manual wiki device status. Support forums mailing lists IRC. Development bugs patches dev guide. Search Login with username, password and session length. News: Thank You for your continued support and contributions!

• Pros

  Inexpensive, especially for 8GB of storage. 1.1-inch screen makes navigation easy and displays album art. Easy to set up and use. Storage is expandable. FM radio and Rhapsody integration.

• Cons

  Slow to boot up. Bundled earbuds are poor quality and uncomfortable.

• Bottom Line

  The SanDisk Sansa Clip Zip is a solid budget MP3 player, small enough to clip to a shirt and sturdy enough to survive your workouts. And it offers much more than the same-price iPod shuffle.

In a world full to the brim with iPods, and one in which many people use their cell phones as music players, dedicated non-Apple MP3 players are hard to come by. My guess is that for most people, an MP3 player is more gym buddy than go-to music player, and if that’s the case for you, the SanDisk Sansa Clip Zip ($49.99-$69.99 direct) is a good choice. It doesn’t have a ton of features, but it's easy to use, boasts a lot of storage in a tiny package, and you can clip to your shirt so it stays secure during your workout. It's not in the same league as the iPod touch ($229, 5 stars), but that’s more mini-computer than MP3 player, and it's much more expensive. If all you want is a simple music player at a low price, the Clip Zip is a good choice, and offers more features including a display and expandable storage, than the same-price iPod shuffle ($49, 3.5 stars). It dethrones its predecessor, the SanDisk Sansa Clip+ (4 stars), as our Editors' Choice budget MP3 player.

• $119.00
• $199.00
• $69.99
• $49.99

Design
Measuring 2.25 by 1.42 by 0.58 inches, the Clip Zip dwarfs the iPod shuffle, but only in the sense that a quarter dwarfs a nickel—it's still awfully small. Weighing all of 0.96 ounce, you’ll hardly even notice it clipped to your shirt or the waist of your shorts. The player comes in black, gray, purple, blue, red, orange, or white, and it's available in two models, differing only in included storage: 4GB ($49.99) or 8GB ($69.99). Included with the Clip Zip are a short USB cable, and a pair of dismal, uncomfortable earbuds. Take some of the money you save buying the Clip Zip, and buy a decent pair of headphones.

Like the iPod shuffle, the Clip Zip’s whole back is a clip, and it’s quite sturdy; no amount of shaking even budged it from its perch during my tests. There’s a Power button on top; Volume buttons and a micro USB port on the left side; a micro SD slot which accepts cards up to 32GB, and a headphone jack on the right side; and on the front, a five-way directional pad, a dedicated, raised Back button and a 1.1-inch screen that looks tiny, but works well. Albeit small, the mere existence of a display is where the Clip Zip edges out the screenless iPod shuffle.

Using the Player
The biggest problem I had with the SanDisk Sansa Clip Zip was obvious the first time I turned the player on; it’s oddly slow to boot. It’s quick to lock and unlock, but if it’s powered down, which it automatically does after a period of inactivity, it takes thirty seconds or so to boot. That’s not a dealbreaker, but it’s worth noting.

The directional pad is the Clip Zip’s biggest improvement over the SanDisk Sansa Fuze+ ($79-$119, 3.5 stars), which used capacitive buttons and a hit-or-miss gesture-based system. The Clip Zip is much more obvious: there are Up/Down/Left/Right buttons (each doubles as something else, such as Play or Forward—it’s sort of like the Apple iPod classic ($249, 4 stars), which marries a scroll wheel with clickable buttons), surrounding a Select button is in the center. Up and to the left is a Back button that brings you back one screen. It's more like the Sansa Clip+'s controls, which we liked more than the Fuze+.

The interface is extremely basic, which isn’t surprising given both the price of the Clip Zip and the size of its screen—there’s not much to work with here. On the Home screen, you get six different options: Music, Radio (FM only), Books (audiobooks), Voice (for making voice recordings), Card (for accessing content on the external card), Sport (a stopwatch), and Settings. Clicking into one of them reveals simple, text-based menus you scroll through with the directional pad. The small screen means you can only see four lines at a time, especially since the top third of the display is wasted by the top menu and a large page title—it’s a poor use of screen real estate. It’s like an iPod menu in that it’s simple to navigate through but might take some time if you’ve got a giant music library. It’s not attractive, but it’s intuitive and easy to operate.

When you’re listening to music, the Clip Zip either shows the album artwork (if you’ve got it), or rotates among an assortment of similar wallpapers. Luckily, the Clip Zip comes with a free trial to TuneUp, a downloadable application that digs through your music collection and automatically updates track information, and downloads album artwork. The Sansa Clip Zip supports MP3, AAC, WMA, OGG, FLAC, a audio files, as well as podcasts and audiobooks (the latter two are sorted out into their own menus).

To get your music on the player, You can connect it to your Windows or Mac computer, and just drag and drop files onto the drive as you would with any external drive. Or, you can pop the tiny disc that’s included with Clip Zip, which lets you update the device’s firmware, as well as installs the Rhapsody software onto your machine. The Sansa Clip Zip and Rhapsody are tightly integrated, giving subscribers access to Rhapsody’s huge library of songs, and the ability to manage your player within the Rhapsody application. If you’re not into iTunes but still want a robust way to manage your music, Rhapsody is a nice alternative, but I preferred the drag-and-drop method.

The FM radio works fine, save for a couple of minor annoyances. For one, it scrolls through every point on the dial—89.1, then 89.2, then 89.3, and so on. So it's a slow go finding your favorite stations. And you can't program presets. It also tended to, in scan mode, skip some working stations that it would then receive loud and clear a moment later. The voice recorder picked up my voice clearly and loudly, but it also captured a lot of background noise. Still, it's a handy feature to have.

Battery life is rated at 15 hours of playback. In my tests, it lasted for 13 hours and 19 minutes of continuous playback before it died. Even after that, it turned back on and played for about 20 more minutes before it died and wouldn't power on again.

If you're looking for a solid, inexpensive, easy-to-use, expandable-storage music player that's sturdy enough to work out with, the SanDisk Sansa Clip Zip ticks all those boxes. It's isn’t quite a perfect package, held back by a couple of minor quirks. But if you want the most for your money, you’ll get more from the Clip Zip than the iPod shuffle—that's why it's our new Editors' Choice.

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SanDisk Sansa Clip Zip

Bottom Line: The SanDisk Sansa Clip Zip is a solid budget MP3 player, small enough to clip to a shirt and sturdy enough to survive your workouts. And it offers much more than the same-price iPod shuffle.

• $119.00
• $49.99
• $99.99
• $19.99

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Unfortunately, no. However, if enough people talk to SanDiskabout it, they might include it in a new firmware update.

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