SANDISK CLIP SPORT PLUS 32GB BLUE

Product Information

It’s the same setup we saw in the Clip Zip. However, battery life has been improved hugely since that model. It has gone from 12 hours to 25. These numbers relate to playing 128kbps MP3s on loop, so actual performance will be a fair bit worse. However, it means the difference between charging once a week and every couple of days – a huge improvement. We got through a week’s use off a charge. The SanDisk 16GB Clip Sport Plus MP3 Player lets you take your audiobooks and music with you on the go without having to carry around a larger device like a phone or tablet. For joggers and gym-goers, the SanDisk Sport Plus is supposed to provide the ideal design at an affordable price without compromising on audio quality. I put down my phone and tested the SanDisk Clip Sport Plus MP3 Player for a week to see if its design, performance, and sound quality make it a worthy contender among its competitors. A big sound quality win for the Clip Sport, though, is codec support. As well as the usual AAC and MP3, the player supports FLAC and OGG files. These aren’t supported by iPods, or Sony’s low-cost ‘sporty’ MP3 players.

You’re asked to select your region upon start-up, and if you select Europe the player is subjected to extremely aggressive volume limitating that effectively ruins the player with any earphones that are remotely hard to drive.The battery lasts for 20 hours on a single charge, but factors like Bluetooth usage and radio use can affect the battery’s performance. During testing, I was able to play music for 9 hours and 40 minutes straight on a pair of wired earbuds, but I didn’t let the device go into sleep mode at all during that time, and I frequently cycled through the menu options.

You can’t replace the lithium polymer rechargeable battery. But the device has a two-year limited warranty, which provides some peace of mind in terms of the unit’s overall quality.IEC 60529 IPX5: Tested to withstand water flow (12.5L/min) at 3 min. Must be clean and dry before use. It’s a 1-inch 128 x 128 pixel LCD display. That’s slightly higher-res than the 96 x 96 pixel screen of the Clip Zip, but it’s still pretty low-res compared with today’s phones, and the 240 x 432 pixel screen of the iPod nano. As we saw with the Clip Sport’s build, it’s not quite Apple-grade. The panel quality is just OK, with pretty severe contrast shift should you turn the screen at the wrong angle. But it’s not bad. It’s a full colour display, and the interface makes good use of the colour palette. It’s bright, it’s colourful and quite simple too, with none of the fiddliness of some other budget players. However, presentation of the mid-range is different. The Clip Sport has much more up-front, harder mids, making vocals sound closer to your ears. The softer, more diffuse mids of the iPod Classic are a little easier on the ear, and the Clip Sport can sound a little harsh at times. However, in pure sound quality terms they are roughly comparable – not great, but decent. You get a pair of earphones in the box, and they’re of reasonable quality. They’re IEM-type isolating earphones – a bit bassy and with just entry-level sound, but not terrible.