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 MP3 player market is in such a diminished state that we’ve learnt not to expect much ‘innovation’ in new products, and you don’t find it here either. However, it’s a good budget alternative to an iPod shuffle. Verdict

Aside from the buttons, a lead hardware feature is the SanDisk Clip Sport’s screen. Some MP3 players at the price don’t have a screen at all. These days a small cheap player doesn’t need to mean a compromise in sound quality. The SanDisk Clip Sport offers decent sound quality and – as long as you don’t select Europe as your region – masses of volume. 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.There's lots to love here including an Android 10 operating system with a touchscreen that's smooth and responsive, a punchy, controlled and detailed sound and a premium build. The M11S is insightful enough to make minor or transient information apparent, and it can describe the most nuanced dynamic variations in a solo instrument with ease. It has more than enough headroom to dispatch the big dynamic shifts with no difficulty, and it can also describe a big, wide and properly defined soundstage. The treble is perhaps a little on the bright side, but not so much that we'd consider it a deal breaker.

IEC 60529 IPX5: Tested to withstand water flow (12.5L/min) at 3 min. Must be clean and dry before use. The SanDisk Clip Sport is a small, fairly cheap MP3 player. It doesn’t have the gloss of Apple and there are few improvements over old models, but it is better. The player is built with a full version of Android, complete with Wi-Fi connectivity and the Google Play Store, which results in it being kind of like an Android version of the iPod touch, able to do much more than just play music. However, the Onkyo DP-X1A is built for super-high-quality audio, and it's an absolute dream. It supports a range of music formats, including FLAC, OGG, WAV, MP3, ALAC, and more. In terms of hardware, the device has two chipsets, one to power the overall device, and one to handle the DAC and amplifier – resulting in a noise-free experience.

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Where the NW-A306 is let down is not in its music-playing skill, but slight niggles with its all round usability. During our testing, we found that the menu could be a little unresponsive, the battery longevity would vary and it surprisingly sounded like it struggled when playing a standard 128kbps audio file, which all together let down our all-round experience just a tad (well, by half a star to be exact). But there’s no denying that the positives vastly outweigh the negatives here. MP3 players won't suit everyone, many prefer the convenience of having all of their music on their phones, but there are plenty of reasons why an MP3 player is a great idea for some people. Is MP3 quality as good as CD?

It supports a huge range of formats, including DSD(DFF, DSF, ISO), FLAC, WAV, AIFF, ALAC, APE, MP3, WMA, OGG and DCF. Music sounds brilliant and with Bluetooth, you can listen on a range of different devices. Although there's no Wi-Fi streaming available. There is an EQ to hand too, but it’s pretty poor. The presets are rather crude, and the custom ‘user’ mode isn’t sophisticated enough to be particularly useful. 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.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 interface is easy to control. Tap through options using the touchscreen, and select the music you want to listen to. It could be more responsive, but you get used to it. Battery life is around nine hours, which isn't amazing, but not terrible either. Others might not have a great deal of space on their phone if it's an older model, so want to store music elsewhere, and some people might not want to use up battery or data when they're on the move. 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.

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. We test dozens of hi-res portable music players every year at TechRadar, and that means we know exactly which features, specs, file support and wireless audio codecs to look out for.It's important for us to compare the performance of these players against the claims made by their manufacturers, which is why we take the time to make sure the stamina, durability, connectivity and sound quality claims are legit. Sport Plus is clearly targeted towards active users who enjoy jogging, hiking, biking, and other outdoor activities. It’s a tiny MP3 player, only measuring 2.6 inches tall by 1.75 inches wide. The featherweight music player has a clip—a must-have for anyone who wants to use their MP3 player on the go. The clip grabs on tightly to clothing, so it doesn’t fall off while you’re on your daily run. The SanDisk Sport Plus has an IPX5 water resistance rating, and you won’t damage the MP3 player with a little sweat or rain. The IPX5 rating means it can withstand low-pressure water jets.We make sure to test each product against its chief competitors too, so you can be sure that if we say so, the product is the best bet for the money. We live with these players for well over a week and run them in religiously so that the components have 'bedded in' before we commence our tests, and we don't finalize our testing until we are certain of the sound quality. As the name suggests, Lossless Audio doesn't sacrifice any of the musical information: the successors to the WAV format used in CDs, which is also lossless, use more advanced technology to take the audio information and make the file smaller without compromising on quality. There are several versions of Lossless Audio including Apple Lossless, FLAC and WMA Lossless, and as you'll see from our guide above you'll often find that the best MP3 players support at least some of those formats.