Well said. I completely agree....without Rockbox, the player is junk, but with it, pretty decent overall. I wouldn't want it as an only player, but as part of a collection it's nice to have.

Thanks for responding.

Agreed, I'm pleased I have a choice of players as I don't think Sandisk care much about longevity or build quality or anything except hitting the bang for buck sector with their giant marketing hammer.

As for the sound I recall someone speculating that the Clip+ sounded good because Sansa must have put a lot of effort and engineering expertise into the audio path. What a beautiful and comical idea! I think Sansa products sometimes sound fine because they don't spend even a penny on superfluous nonsense like creating a house sound or buying into any other company's "Beats Audio" type schemes. Default/reference sound of the hardware is what you will usually get, and all in the name of indifference and penny pinching

I'm slightly undecided on the sound. I've seen skamp's RMAA frequency response curves suggesting it doesn't deviate that far from flat and has good figures for distortion and noise but subjectively it feels a bit dull.

I wouldn't encourage anyone spend $85 for a new one but at refurb prices this is a steal and well worth having.

 After having one for a little while many months ago, my buddy got frustrated with trying to make it work and sent it back to me, so I just re-Rockboxed it the other day and haven't spent much time with it yet. A quick 5 minute sample with my JVC HA-S500 seemed to deliver pretty good sound, and I don't remember anyone ever reporting hearing any CPU noise from one of these like they did from some Clip+ variants.

Yes, all the annoying noises I knew from the Clip+ and Fuze v2 are gone and the Fuze+ matches a high quality IDE disk based player of a decade ago. It even has the trademark hiss. Progress!

I did some more careful level matching of Fuze+ vs H140 by feeding a recorder with 1000 Hz tone played from headphone jack through IEM to microphone. I matched levels at normal and very loud levels to within a very tiny fraction of a dB. The results turned out exactly the same as doing it headphone jack out->line in (no headphone load) with 10000 Hz tone but now I know there isn't an impedance related variation with the levels, at least at 1000 Hz and 10000 Hz tones with 16 ohm IEMs. I've done a lot more listening, both attentive and casual, sometimes for making comparisons but mostly for the pleasure of hearing the music.

I wasn't right to identify the Fuze+ as dull. It's more the case that the iRiver players have a very slightly forward treble with low impedance IEMs and I have got *very* used to it over almost 10 years. Strictly in terms of tonality the Fuze+ sounds closer to my Yamaha receiver's DAC+amp than do the old iRivers.

With suitably sensitive IEMs or headphones the sound of the Rockboxed Fuze+ is hard to criticise.

Nice to see a review that gives the fuze+ a chance. uhm. In my country, for some reason, both 4gb clip zip and fuze+ costs about 50$ (converted from our currency). I'm planning to get either one of those. Im leaning a little bit to the fuze+ because of the bigger and better screen, especially after reading your review after you rockboxed it. So which one should i get especially if they have even a tiny bit of audible difference in sound quality? Thank you.

If audio quality is the most important thing then get the Fuze+ because it doesn't make intrusive noises like the Clip series and older versions of the Fuze. It also has enough CPU power to run EQ and crossfeed and database updates and PictureFlow or games all at the same time and without any problem of any kind. I don't know if the headphone jack is the same part or different but on my Fuze+ it is secure with no noise from movement and this is better than my Clip+.

If pure convenience is the most important thing then the Clip Zip easily wins because it it so tiny and light and has the clip, and hardware buttons are probably always going to be more convenient than a touchpad on a tiny device like this. I think if people have an issue with the Fuze+ it will always be the touchpad. If you need to use the player with it in your pocket or one handed then however well the touchpad works it won't be what you want.

You get longer battery life with the Fuze+ but I think the Clip series have simpler hardware and more reliable USB support.

The only thing I miss from the Clip series is actually the clip and being able to securely attach the player to a sleeve or bag strap or similar. I used velcro to attach a clip to my Fuze+ but in fact it is just big enough to be a bit clumsy and a bit less secure.

Refurbished Clips are very cheap here at the moment and I did consider getting one but actually I remember how annoying I found the variety of unwanted noises and how often I put down the Clip and picked up my much bigger, heavier and less convenient old hard disk players instead.

The one thing I can't yet compare is durability. My Clip+ got a real beating for about two and a half years and I really can't complain that it died. I have no idea if the Fuze+ might survive the same carelessness for as long.

Thank you for the comprehensive advice. I appreciate it. I guess i have no follow up questions. I'll be getting the Fuze+ and take care of it and hope it last for at least a year. thanks again.

Fuze Plus is Brillant when it works. Had to send back mine twice because of sound failure. Now,  I have audio connector problem, only left side is working. Crap.