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SanDisk Clip Sport

I got my first MP3 player in 2006, a SanDisk Sansa e140. As that one aged, I picked up the SanDisk Sansa Fuze in 2009. Recently my poor Sansa Fuze has been having trouble updating the library (takes a long time) and would randomly freeze up. After getting worse over my past few trips, I finally resigned to getting a new player.

As I began looking for players, I was quickly struck by how limited the MP3 player market is these days. I suspect this is due to so many people using their phones for music these days, but that’s not a great option for me for a variety of reasons:

  • Limits to battery life on my phone make a 12 hour flight (or a 3 hour flight, then an 8 hour flight, then navigating a foreign city…) a bit tricky.
  • While I do use my phone for runs (yay for running apps) I don’t like using my phone in the gym, because it’s bulky and I’m afraid of breaking it.
  • Finally, my desire for an FM tuner hasn’t changed, and I’m quite fond of the range of formats my Fuze supported (flac, ogg, etc).

So I found the SanDisk Clip Sport MP3 Player. Since I’ve been happy with my SanDisk players throughout the years and the specs pages seemed to meet my needs, I didn’t hesitate too much about picking it up for $49.99 on Amazon. Obviously I got the one with pink trim.

I gave the player a spin on my recent trip to Philadelphia. Flight time: 5 hours each way. I’m happy to report that the battery life was quite good, I forgot to charge it while in Philadelphia but the charge level was still quite high when I turned it on for my flight home.

Overall, I’m very happy with it, but no review would be complete without the details!

Cons:

  • Feels a bit plasticy – the Fuze had a metal casing
  • I can’t figure out how it sorts music in file view, doesn’t seem alphabetical…

Pros:

  • Meets my requirements: FM Tuner, multiple formats – my oggs play fine out of the box, the Fuze required a firmware upgrade
  • Standard Micro USB connector for charging – the Fuze had a custom connector
  • File directory listing option, not just by tags
  • Mounts via USB mass storage in Linux
  • Micro SD/SDHC expansion slot if I need to go beyond 8G

We’ll see how it holds up through the abuse I put it through while traveling.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 15th, 2014 at 5:32 pm and is filed under pink. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

5 Comments

  • Wilmer
    Friday, Aug 15th, 2014 at 17:58

    Try Rockbox if you don’t like the stock firmware, that’s what I do on my Zip+ which looks quite similar to this. It also solves the problem of the thing wanting to reindex its database every time you accidentally plugged it into a PC instead of a power-only USB port.

  • opello
    Friday, Aug 15th, 2014 at 19:35

    I am also a little disappointed with the very plastic feel after picking one up, but I wanted something for an upcoming trip. My former player is a Sansa e250 which is metal and feels quite substantial by comparison. But I suppose if it’s primarily for working out they want to keep it light.

  • Mark
    Monday, Feb 9th, 2015 at 19:34

    I keep seeing mention of upgrading the Sansa Clip Sport with rockbox; I was planning on trying it myself when I ordered mine. However, there is no support for the Clip Sport by rockbox, and it appears the support will never exist.