Sometime in 2007 I purchased an MP3 player and started subscribing to Rhapsody’s subscription music service, Rhapsody To Go. The player was a Clix from iRiver and while it’s been fine, I’ve never been thrilled with it. It has a tendency to freeze, it’s clunky and recently its battery life seems to have grown shorter and shorter between recharges. Its most recent woe is a battery life indicator that always cheerfully says “full!” When you’re halfway through a three hour long run and the music dies, that’s a long 90 minutes running with useless earphones in your ears.
It was time to replace the Clix. Naturally, I figured I’d first check out what iRiver was making these days. But unfortunately the iRiver web site has gone from bad to worse. I wonder if they actually want people to buy their products. Since I couldn’t make sense of their product line I next took a look at Sansa’s players, which had always had a reputation for playing nicely with Rhapsody. I settled on the Clip+ player. For $64 I got:
- 8 gigs of storage (that’s 6 gigs more than the Clix has)
- Room for up to 32 gigs more thanks to the MicroSD card slot
- 15 hours of battery life
- An FM radio with more presets than I’ll ever use
- A sturdy, built-in clip
- Excellent sound quality
- An easy-to-navigate menu system
- On-the-fly playlist creation and removal of tracks
- Seamless integration with Rhapsody, including its radio-like, musically themed “channels” (which never worked with the Clix)
- No software drivers needed; it’s plug and play!
All this in a package that weighs about an ounce and is smaller than a matchbox.
This is not my hand. My fingers are not chubby.
Despite being a Mac user since 1988 (I still remember being awed by the computing power of the Mac Plus), and still using one for my personal machine, I’ve never owned an iPod. Maybe I’m mentally challenged, but I couldn’t figure out the clickwheel the one time I tried to use one. Plus, who wants to pay for every song? For $15 a month I can download and take with me any of around 2,000,000 songs. If I want to buy something, I can download the MP3s, oftentimes for less than what Apple is charging for them on iTunes.
I’d looked at the previous generation of the Clip, but the actual clip looked flimsy, as did the materials overall. But with the “+” edition, Sansa seems to have gotten things right. I wore it on a faster run on the track this morning and, unlike the Clix, which bounced around like a small brick, I often had trouble locating the player on my shorts.
If people are willing to wrest themselves from the Apple hegemony of iTunes, the Clip+ and Rhapsody To Go are an attractive prospect. Observe:
- The Clip+ is cheaper than the 4GB Shuffle by about $10
- It has a radio, a voice recorder, twice the storage (and up to 10x the storage if you spring for a MicroSD card)
- It has a display screen; shouldn’t this be a basic feature?
- No stupid white headphones
Be a rebel. Dump the iPod.
Filed under: clothes and gear, music | Tagged: clip+, mp3 player, sansa | 18 Comments »
Races Like a Girl 