[Review] Sansa Clip+ vs Clip Zip!

[keanex]

 
 
Hey guys, I’ve had my Sansa Clip Zip and Clip+ for a few months now. They’ve seen some wear and tear and have made me completely forget about my old iPod so I figured I would share some thoughts and compare these two budget workhorses. The Clip+ and Zip have both been Rockboxed and have seen about the same amount of usage. This review/comparison is nothing more than my opinion and should be taken as such.
 

Capactiy: Draw

 
Both the Zip and Clip+ top out at 8gb max with up to 64gb expandable with Rockbox installed. This allows them to both carry up to 72gb of music (before formatting) which I find to be large enough for me to carry my full library when carrying both players.
 

Battery Life: Zip

 
Both offer up to 15 hours of playback according to Sansa’s website. Many users claim longer battery life with Rockbox installed. I haven’t done a side by side to see which lasts longer, but I’m giving the Zip here the win for one reason; compatability.
 
The Clip+ uses an outdated mini-B style USB connector while the Zip uses a more modern micro-B style connector. The micro-B is what most non-Apple smartphone using users will have already in their house and perhaps their car. I already have a micro-B car charger and I feel many others do also. Even if the battery on the Zip dies, I can easily re-charge it on the go.
 

Build: Draw

 

 
 
Both the Clip+ and the Clip are small and made of cheap feeling plastic. While the plastic takes away any sort of classy aesthetics, it makes them very lightweight. The positive to this is that since they are so light they suffer little damage from drops. I have dropped both of the devices on hard asphalt as well as concrete a few times, call me clumsy. I’ve also dropped the Clip+ while running and trampled over it. This caused some aesthetic blemishes, see photos, but physically the little guy is still kicking and operating fully.
 
The buttons on both are responsive and tight. Neither device is showing any signs of button wear despite me using these rather often and navigating heavily sometimes.
 
One thing that does bother me though is that I feel the actual clip could have a bit more clamp. I’ve had the Zip and Clip+ fall off while connected to gym shorts and jogging. Just a little more!
 
Both the Zip and Clip+ offer great build quality despite being cheap. Their light weight allows them to suffer little damage from falling and the buttons feel responsive and tight even months in. Neither wins here, they’re both built to the same specifications.
 

Screen: Clip+

 

 
 
The Clip+ features a simple led screen which is rather small with a limited range of colors. Despite the screen being small and limited, I find that the text appears rather sharp and easy to read as the bright LED lights are contrasted nicely on the background.
 
The Clip Zip offers a very slightly larger screen with color. This allows for album art to be seen as well as slightly more real estate for slightly larger letters. Unfortunately the quality of the color screen isn’t very good and it isn’t nearly as easy to read as the Clip+.
 
The Clip+ wins due to sharper and easier to read text. I see no benefit to the cover art on the Zip as the screen is far too small to enjoy it.
 

Sound: Draw

 
Both devices have offered a clean and powerful enough sound to sound good with any IEM that I’ve used with them. I notice no major coloring, though it’s certainly not as clean as my desktop set-up, which is expected. When comparing the sound to an iPod Classic I feel that the Clip+/Zip offer a bit more clean of a sound with a little more power. I felt many dual driver+ IEMs sounded odd on the Classic, but they sound fine on the Clips.
 

Overall: Draw

 
I can’t really take sides here. The Clip+ has an easier to read screen while the Zip offers better compatibility with modern phone chargers. Both devices are more than worth the ~$40 they go for and I think that anyone who goes to the gym often would be missing out to not have one of these devices. The Clips have replaced my iPod and while I do have my eyes on other DAPs I find myself satisfied with the overall quality of these devices, which far exceeds their cost.

The Clip Zip and Clip+ are definite must own DAPs for a beater DAP that you can toss around and leave places. I highly recommend them.

 

[davidcotton]

Nice review, one thing to note is that as long as it is formatted correctly then the clip plus will take 128 gig micro sd cards quite happily.  If you are willing to jury rig with an adapter and a 256 sd card strapped to the back then it will take those as well!

 

[bungle]

Nice review, one thing to note is that as long as it is formatted correctly then the clip plus will take 128 gig micro sd cards quite happily.  If you are willing to jury rig with an adapter and a 256 sd card strapped to the back then it will take those as well!

 


I have been using a Rockboxed Zip for a couple of years and really like it.

What constitutes "formatted correctly"? And do you know if the Clip Zip handles 128G cards as well? Currently I swap 32G cards occasionally, which is tolerable only because Rockbox allows a library-free mode, which means I don't have to wait for it to scan the card after I swap. But having only one card would be nice, even though I still won't use the library.

My only problem with it is that the battery is not replaceable, so eventually I'll have to get a new one. Hopefully they make them for a long time as I hate dealing with finding new things when what I have suits me fine.

 

[castleofargh]

do you guys get the buzzz noise(what I call buffering noise) on both clip zip and clip+?

 

[JK1]

Putting a 128 GB card in a Clip+ or Clip Zip does seem excessive. Even if you do have that much good music, if the music is at 256kbps, 
you could only play around 1.3% of the music on the player each charge cycle, assuming you don't play any songs more than once
per charge cycle. I could see perhaps having that much music in a player with 110 hour battery life. I have a 16GB card in my Sandisk players.
i have 32GB card still sealed in the package. While I could probably fill the 32GB card with music at 256kbps and use it in my Rockboxed 
players, my favorite 16GB or so of music is probably what I would choose to play at least 90% of the time anyway.

 

[BGRoberts]

Nice review.

I've used Sansa players for years and have been very happy with them. I'd pretty much agree that the Plus and the Zip are equals. The Zip has more colors available.

Hard to beat for the price, especially if you can catch a refurbished deal. I got my current Clip+ 8gb in black for $35 last year. Sweet!

Keep listening!
BG

 

[davidcotton]

  do you guys get the buzzz noise(what I call buffering noise) on both clip zip and clip+?

Is that when it changes tracks?  If so then yes.  Noticeable on sensitive iems in particular

 

[davidcotton]

  Putting a 128 GB card in a Clip+ or Clip Zip does seem excessive. Even if you do have that much good music, if the music is at 256kbps, 
you could only play around 1.3% of the music on the player each charge cycle, assuming you don't play any songs more than once
per charge cycle. I could see perhaps having that much music in a player with 110 hour battery life. I have a 16GB card in my Sandisk players.
i have 32GB card still sealed in the package. While I could probably fill the 32GB card with music at 256kbps and use it in my Rockboxed 
players, my favorite 16GB or so of music is probably what I would choose to play at least 90% of the time anyway.

Half of it is audiobooks though.  I've lost track of the times I've been at work and thought "oh I'll listen to...." and not had it on there!

 

[JK1]

 
Half of it is audiobooks though.  I've lost track of the times I've been at work and thought "oh I'll listen to...." and not had it on there!

There was a time when I had many podcasts on my players. I converted the podcasts to 32kbps mono soon after I downloaded them. 
Some were originally 128 kbps stereo. What a waste! Using a bitrate of anything more than 32kbps mono is a waste of space for
spoken word files. Some of the podcasts I downloaded were at 16 kbps, and even many of those didn't sound so bad. The sound quality
of the 32kbps files were quite a bit better. Any bitrate higher than that though didn't increase the sound quality of spoken word files significantly.
When listening to spoken word files recorded in stereo, one could get a dizzy feeling if the speaker was walking around when talking.
Mono is always best for spoken word files. At 32kbps, one could fit around 36 hours of podcasts into each GB of space.

 

[castleofargh]

 

  do you guys get the buzzz noise(what I call buffering noise) on both clip zip and clip+?

Is that when it changes tracks?  If so then yes.  Noticeable on sensitive iems in particular

hey thank you. yes I'm talking about that, when it's loading the track and every minutes or 30secs I don't really know(reason why I call it buffering noise).
someone on headfi told me once that this noise was only on the clip+. I have mostly clip+s at home and only 1 clip zip that does "bzzzzz" from time to time. so I was wondering if I was just unlucky  and should from now on just buy clip zips or if they really were just the same thing with the same pros and cons. (what's 256 colors when you already have 2? ^_^)
 
edit: I also use my sansas a lot for audiobook purposes. for some podcasts the sony can be more convenient, but it stopping after each chapter of a book can really be a bother. never a problem with a clip.

 

[JK1]

Some have said this noise tends to occur when using very low impedance earphones(12 ohms or less?)
My earphones are 16 ohms or higher, and I haven't heard the noise you describe.

 

[headdict]

Hopefully they make them for a long time as I hate dealing with finding new things when what I have suits me fine.

Both are out of production, I'm afraid.

 

[JK1]

Both are out of production, I'm afraid.

The Clip+ seems to be readily available from B&H and Amazon. The Clip Zip is getting harder to find new, and the price seems to be going up.
 
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?atclk=Brand_SanDisk&ci=4259&N=4035153623+4291236412
 
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Sandisk%20Clip%2B

 

[davidcotton]

  There was a time when I had many podcasts on my players. I converted the podcasts to 32kbps mono soon after I downloaded them. 
Some were originally 128 kbps stereo. What a waste! Using a bitrate of anything more than 32kbps mono is a waste of space for
spoken word files. Some of the podcasts I downloaded were at 16 kbps, and even many of those didn't sound so bad. The sound quality
of the 32kbps files were quite a bit better. Any bitrate higher than that though didn't increase the sound quality of spoken word files significantly.
When listening to spoken word files recorded in stereo, one could get a dizzy feeling if the speaker was walking around when talking.
Mono is always best for spoken word files. At 32kbps, one could fit around 36 hours of podcasts into each GB of space.

I'm talking (hah!) about full cast audio stories though, so 192 is really the minimum.  I did have them all as m4b (the official itunes audiobook format)but sadly rockbox doesn't support it, so had to do a batch convert (ouch).
 

  The Clip+ seems to be readily available from B&H and Amazon. The Clip Zip is getting harder to find new, and the price seems to be going up.
 
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?atclk=Brand_SanDisk&ci=4259&N=4035153623+4291236412
 
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Sandisk%20Clip%2B

So moral of the story there is to buy a couple now for storage!

 

[bungle]

I wrote Sandisk this month and they said "Our Sansa Clip+ and Clip Zip both are being manufactured currently." How long that will continue to be true I don't know.

As for SD card size - if I can get it all to fit why not? I don't see any point of not having everything I own available at all times. I really don't see what the "charge cycle" has to do with it - I'm not going to change music every time I charge it. (I used to deal with that when I had a 2GB Cowon G3, and it sucked.)