The basics from the Clip+ are still there in terms of features and basic design, but there are a few new features both on the surface and under the hood. The most noticeable of which is probably the new 1.1″ full color screen, which is a nice upgrade both in size and colors from the old OLED screen. One of our forum members got his hands on the new player and has written a comparison of the new Zip and the old Clip+ which shows that the new Zip is size wise pretty much the same as the Clip+, but with a rectangular control pad to make room for the bigger screen.

As for features under the hood, alphabet browsing has now been added when browsing files as well as the ability to deactivate unused menu items. The former is something I’ve loved on other players (like the Sony players) for years and seeing it on a SanDisk player is great. The menu “clean up” feature is also a nice addition, and lets more hard core music users hide features such as the radio (which now has a recording feature) and the new stopwatch. The new color screen also means a new UI, naturally, and from the pictures in the beforementioned forum thread it seems to be a lot like the interface of the Fuze+.

Overall it seems like a great update to the existing Clip+, and as Marvin points out in his comparison review it’s a lot more traditional of an update than the touch controlled Fuze+ of last year was.

[SanDisk | Sansa Clip Zip Review]

When it was time for SanDisk to update the Fuze, they dubbed it the Fuze+ rather than make it a completely new player- just as they did with the Sansa Clip+. While the Clip+ truly was a minor (but awesome) update though, you can stare at the Fuze and Fuze+ for hours without seeing the connection. Some of the “updates” are for the better, but others are not.

• Sandisk Sansa Fuze+ Specs
• Screen: 2.4″ 320×240 pixels
• Supported formats: MP3, WMA, Secure WMA, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, AAC, Audible
• Connectivity: microUSB, MTP/MSC user selectable
• Storage: 4, 8 or 16GB + microSDHC slot
• Battery life: 24 hours audio, 5 hours video
• Features: radio, video, podcast, audiobooks, photos
• Review based on firmware 2.37.1

Design

The original Fuze is a pretty rectangular device, with a scroll wheel that seems to point towards iPods as the origins for the design. The Fuze+ however have left most of its tactile controls behind and gone for a more rounded off, pebble shaped device. It has a lot more in common with some of the older Samsung players than with the original Fuze, and it’s definitely a lot more ergonomic. The back is rounded off in all directions so that holding it is like holding a bar of soap, and it generally looks a bit more 2011.

The front of the player holds the main playback controls, which are now in the form of a capacitive touchpad instead of the old scroll wheel and buttons. It works a lot like a capacitive touch screen that you’d find on most touch screen cell phones and tablets these days, but you’re touching static symbols rather than a screen. I’m not a big fan of touchpads and right off the bat this is one of the biggest disadvantages of the Fuze+, but I’ll get back to that later.

The three tactile buttons left on the player are located on the top and left side of the player. The top has the on/off switch (which doubles as a control lock button) and the left side holds the volume rocker. The left side also has the microSDHC slot that survived the transition from the original Fuze.

The bottom holds the 3.5mm headphone port, located square in the center of the player. Some people dislike having the headphone port on the bottom, while others feel that it makes it easier to pull the player out of a pocket and get it the right side up.

One very noticeable new feature is the lack of a proprietary dock connector like the Fuze, E200 and View has. Instead the Fuze+ features a microUSB connector, which is going to be the standard some day but still feels “unusual” when you’re used to miniUSB. The connector is also located on the right side rather than the bottom, which means that we’re unlikely to see any sort of dock for the player (which would have been pretty useless anyways since the lack of a 30 pin connector means no line-out, no video-out, and no remote control functionality).

The screen is 240×320 pixels, a nice upgrade from the original Fuze. The viewing angles are good with the exception of when it’s viewed from the top, which becomes the left side in landscape mode. Because of this, it’s easy to accidentally view it from an angle that makes the screen looks a lot worse than it is, and if you want to watch video on this you should actually be tilting the right side towards you a little bit to get the best result. This is pretty typical of cheaper devices, and something that it’s easy to forget is an issue if you’re used to higher end devices.

Interface

The interface has also been revamped on the Fuze+. It frankly looks a bit Zune-ish, for better and for worse. The wallpaper is automatically created using album art from music on the player, with colored filters overlaid for each menu item. You scroll left and right by swiping the touch panel, which is a somewhat slow process where you can easily hit play. You have 8 options; music, video, photo, radio, books (podcasts/audiobooks), voice, memory card and settings. The options that have content available show thumbnails, in form of album art for audio and still frames for video.

In the music menu, sorting options like artist/album has been turned into tabs rather than a list of submenus. You scroll left and right to switch between album/artist/songs/genres/playlists and up/down to scroll the list. The album tab also shows the album art beside each listing, while the other options just list the content in text. There are also deeper submenus for both artists, albums and genres where selecting an artist will show you albums and selecting an album will show an album art carousel letting you scroll left and right through albums. In other words, you can be fairly specific in what you choose with the Fuze+, which is a good thing considering this player can hold up to 48GB of music.

The other media menus have a lot less complicated sorting options. For video you can sort by name or duration, and that’s it. Photos can be sorted alphabetically or by date, books by podcasts/audiobooks/Audible. As for the card menu, that is basically just a copy of the main menu (with only music/video/books/photos) restricted to on-card content. Any content on the card integrates with the main content menus, so the card menu is really more for the SlotRadio cards, Sandisk’s series of microSD card pre-loaded with music. Be warned though that indexing a card to make this possible is a very slow process, with a couple of dozen songs I tried taking several minutes. I dare not speculate how long it would take to fully index a 32GB card, but there’s likely to be a new version of the Fuze out by the time it finishes. What’s even worse is that it needs to “load” the card every time it’s been removed, even though it has already indexed it. This is common issue with players that support external storage, and there’s no way around it.

The music playback screen has also been updated, putting a lot more emphasis on album art. The album art collage is still visible in the background, with the currently playing song’s album art displayed in circa 200×200 resolution on top. Below that you have progression bar, song title, artist and album info. Touching the middle of the touchpad while on this screen brings up options to rate the song, shuffle and repeat options, “add to playlist” option and an option to delete the track. Sandisk has made the same mistake so many others have with placing equalizer, replay gain and sleep settings in the main settings menu accessible only from the main menu, making it a pain to access those features.

Controls

The actual navigation using the touch panel is frankly absolutely horrible. It reminds me a bit of trying to use swiping gestures on a resistive touch screen, and compared to the excellent (and fast) scroll wheel on the original Fuze, Sandisk has taken the Fuze+ at least 10 years backwards in time when it comes to user friendly controls. Sometimes the panel doesn’t react, something you hit the wrong button, and sometimes the reaction from the player is so slow that it seems like it didn’t notice the touch input. As someone who’s now comfortably used to capacitive glass touch screens that react just the way they should, I barely even made it through this review without smashing the Fuze+ into tiny unrecognizable pieces , all because of the nightmarish controls. Forget about using the player with an armband, in your pocket, or any other way where you’re not concentrating fully. This new touch feature might sound modern on paper, but in reality it’s not even suited for flushing a toilet.

Features

Video

I still remember back in 2007 when the D2 came out, and 320×240 video was an awesome feature. I spent hours watching videos on that thing. creating a library of converted files. These days, you can get a 7″ HD capable media player for what the D2 cost back then. Many people have smartphones that can play awesome looking video without conversion, or stream directly off the net. Naturally, it’s hard to be impressed by 320×240 in this day and age, even if it’s a decent upgrade from the original Fuze. As with any such “not really a video player”, you need to convert the video before watching, using the Sansa Media Converter or other software that you tuen to the required video specs. The resulting video quality is decent as far as 320×240 video goes, but I think it’s safe to say that no one is going to buy the Fuze+ to watch video. If anyone is, they’re likely to be kids or others with low budgets- and for such uses, it will do a decent job.

Photos

The photo viewer on the Fuze+ is also somewhat limited, requiring conversion for most formats and of course being limited to the 320×240 resolution. The viewing angle issue becomes a problem here as well, since you’re likely to view photos in landscape and have the bad viewing angle be the left side. Still, it does the job for showing the occasional photo to your friends.

Radio

The radio on the Fuze+ is a nice surprise. Naturally it has the same preset functionality and auto-scanning as any other radio enabled player out there, but it also adds radio recording which is a far less common feature. Again they’ve placed some of the settings in the main settings menu rather than in the radio menu, but only region settings and stereo mode- no recording settings, and no timer to automatically record radio. Still, better than most radio enabled players.

Books

Calling this section “books” is somewhat misleading as there isn’t an ereader in there, but rather audio books and podcasts. Sandisk has always been on the very front line of podcast and audio book support, acknowledging that they should have their own features separate from music for years. Audible support is also included, with such audio books also having their own section. Files that classify as one of these three will have a couple of extra features, namely the ability to resume playback and the ability to adjust playback speed.

Sound Quality

What can I say? This thing sounds just like any other quality player in this price range. It doesn’t have line out, and it doesn’t have any useful sound enhancements other than the standard equalizer, so you end up with that “nothing to write home about” sound quality that is so common in players like this. Pair the Fuze+ up with a good pair of IEMs or headphones and you won’t complain, even if you won’t see anyone at you-know-where plug 14 tube amps, 3 DACs and a Pikachu made of ebony into it and swear that the Rapture is happening every time the thing is turned on.

Conclusion

The Fuze+ is not an easy player to judge objectively. On one hand, the design is good, possible storage capacity is excellent, menus are very nice looking and there are plenty of features for such a player. On the other hand. the controls are so beyond bad that it makes me want to cry. If you could rip out the touchpad on the Fuze+ and insert the scroll wheel from the original Fuze (and make the menus a bit faster) you’d have an excellent player. As it is, you have a very average player. I’d actually recommend a Sansa Clip+ over the Fuze+ unless video is an absolute necessity, as it’s certainly a less annoying experience as far as controls go. You can get the Fuze+ for less than $50 though (4GB), so I can’t be too hard on it. For a consumer level MP3 player that doesn’t care that the world is now full of Angry Birds enabled Android based media players and tablets, it isn’t a bad deal. After all, you have to at least triple the cost of the cheapest Fuze+ to get something that really stands out.

But wait there is more! We are also running a similar contest at anythingbutiphone and giving away an HTC HD7 Windows Phone. Just the same as the ABI contest just hit the like button on the anythingbutiphone Facebook page and you will be entered to win. Only two days left so show us some love!

Actually, one more…. SanDisk is also running a contest on their Facebook page as well. Check it out.

References: NothingButTablets, EOS MovRec, Rockbox, Doom

In a device world where many are lining up behind app stores and music players on phones are taking a portion of the portable audio market, the dedicated MP3 player is far from dead. 2010 was a little bit of a slow year but some really interesting shifts towards these App centric non phone media players is happening. We got a little taste of it this year but will see a lot more of it for 2011.
As for 2010, here are there players that were at the top for 2010.

#5: Creative Zen X-Fi2

Honestly, I’m still disappointed with Creative for not following up what I believe to be one of the best MP3 players of all time, the Zen Vision:M. A sore spot for many Creative fans, but it still hasn’t killed the enthusiasm for their other compelling players. The Zen X-Fi 2 is an OK player- typical to Creative but with an average resistive touch screen. What puts this player in the number 5 spot is the hobbyist development community that sprung up around it. This development community’s success can be attributed to Creative opening up the player with a simple Lua scripting language and promoting it. Equally important was the ground of developers that really creative yet simple apps for the device. Creative has even featured some of these apps on their official site. Buy one. X-Fi 2 Forum. Download XFi-2 Apps.

#4: Archos 32

Archos has always been bitter sweet to me. The hardware and price points have always been great, but the software/firmware has always lacked. It became quite a mess when Archos tried to overly customize Andoid for the last generation devices- See the Archos 5 IMT review. However, I think that Archos is at a turning point for the better. Their 8th generation of devices have been pretty impressive on both the hardware and their once Achilles – firmware. It might not quite be top notch yet, but it is certainly leaps better.

While Archos is cranking out some nice large sized tablets, they have not ignored the portable audio market. The Archos 32 is an Andoid 2.2 (at the time of this article it is a rather current build) PMP. It is at the low end and I would certainly call it a budget or lower end player, but it has great performance for its low $150 price point. Archos has also greatly improved the sound quality over previous generations. It won’t quite go head to head with Cowon, but it is certainly above average. Buy one. Archos Forum.

#3: Microsoft Zune HD

The Zune HD returns to the list this year with a few updates and a lot more apps. Zune’s strong point is undoubtedly its user interface, but what is also very attractive is the $15/month subscription and social aspects of sharing and discovering new music. During 2010, many more applications were released even though the Zune HD still remains centered around entertainment and not a full blow app centric device. Though why the Zune HD didn’t make it higher on the list is because some of its features do count on the monthly Zune Pass subscription and the Zune HD hardware plus this pass is what makes Zune a remarkable portable entertainment device. Buy one. Zune Forum. Zune HD Review.

#2: SanDisk Sansa Clip +

The Clip didn’t get an update in 2010 (Clip++ ?)but still remains one of the top purchased players on this site so we had to put it back on the top 5 list this year. There will always be a special place in our hearts for the Clip+ due to its high quality sound, memory expandability, and Rockboxability at an amazingly low purchase price. The Clip+ is easily the player that will give you the most bang for the buck. Ask any one of our regular forum members what players they have and more than likely it will include a Sansa Clip- it’s a staple in ABI member’s gear bags often in multiples. Buy one. Clip+ Forum. Clip+ Rockbox. Clip+ Review.

#1: Cowon J3

Cowon’s S9 made the list at #3 in 2009 for its amazing sound quality and its fantastic looking AMOLED screen. The J3 builds and improves on the S9’s firmware, features, design, and UI- so much so that we felt that it needed to be at the number one spot for 2010. Cowon stays true to its audiophile roots with some of the most comprehensive sound tweaks including BBE sound enhancements, and a very robust EQ. Despite lacking some codec and container support video playback looks great on the AMOLED screen.

We love that Cowon stayed with a pure audio / video playback platform and stayed away from the Android mess of 2010, but we are looking forward to see how the Android based D3 device will play out in 2011. It would be great to see an audiophile centric Andoid player. Buy one. Cowon J3 Forum. Cowon J3 Review.

This morning UPS delivered the package and to my surprise, this is what i received…

Inside the 3x9x6.5″ cardboard box:

• Invoice
• 1 sq ft of bubble wrap
• 3×5 invitation to write a review on sandisk.com

I was going to go into an angry rant here about wastefulness and general incompetence, but the disappointment overwhelms the anger. =(

Update: SanDisk has stepped up and taken responsibility for the waste of resources, environmental impact, and most of all customer satisfaction. I have had two phone conversations with two different parts of their company about taking internal corrective measures and ensuring that something like this wont happen again. Its always a breath of fresh air when companies like SanDisk take responsibility and make things right. Thanks SanDisk!

ABI forum member glove4 received his Fuze+ today ordered from SanDisk.com. Amazon is note quite shipping yet but will likely be available shortly. Mine should be here soon, so expect a full on review to follow but in the mean time take a look at glove4’s first impressions here in the Fuze+ forums along with some photos.

Update: Now available to pre-order on Amazon.

It has been awhile since we heard anything from the SanDisk Sansa line of MP3 players and we have seen some leaks of the Fuze+ a few weeks ago but today SanDisk announces the Fuze+ with the full fanfare of a landing page on SanDisk.com.

Unlike the Clip+ the Fuze+ appears to be more than an incremental upgrade with an all new UI and industrial design. Coming in 5 different colors and 3 different capacities (4, 8, 16GB) it will also include the SanDisk standard microSD card for an additional 32GB of memory.

We will have the review up soon, but in the mean time SanDisk is already showing off the UI and some it its features in videos embedded below.

Specifications/Features:

• Capacities: 4GB, 8GB, 16GB
• 2.4″ bright QVGA screen (320 x 240, 30 FPS) LCD screen
• Audio formats: MP3, WMA, Secure WMA, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, AAC, Audible, Podcasts
• Video formats: MPEG-4, H.264, WMV and Flip Video™
• Photo formats: JPEG and BMP; photo formats can be further extended with Sansa Media Converter PC software download∞, enabling TIFF, GIF, and PNG formats
• Digital FM Tuner with pause and record functions
• Rechargeable battery lasts up to 24 hours for audio playback and 5 hours of video playback†
• Hi-speed micro-USB 2.0 port
• Expandable microSDTM card slot and microSDHCTM card slot
• Ready for slotRadio™ & slotMusic™ memory cards
• Sleek industrial design with “invisible” capacitive touch control and highly intuitive graphical user interface

More Videos of the UI on SanDisk.com. Discussion at Sansa Fuze+ Forum.

The Sansa Clip+ is one of the most popular players on this because it’s a very good player with a lot of things going for it. It didn’t end up like that without reason, and SanDisk have benefited greatly from being active in collecting user opinions and feature requests over the years. Added software elements like Ogg Vorbis and FLAC support, file/folder browsing and hard related things like a microSDHC slot are all features that have been requested by users of this forum and others. With SanDisk actually paying attention, that means that a lot more people are willing to bring things to their attention, and we have a thread in the forums for that exact reason. Here are some of the features requested in that thread, along with some others. SanDisk, we’re counting on you to use this information well, like you’ve done in the past.

Feature Requests

True gapless playback

Gapless playback currently only works for some but not all files. Gapless should be implemented for all files, including Ogg Vorbis and MP3 files. MP3 is by default not gapless, but it’s still possible to make it gapless.

More accurate volume control

This was an issue with the first Clip that is back with the Clip+. The volume needs to have more levels to be able to adjust the volume more accurately. Also, the lowest level is still too loud for a lot of uses (like the radio), which needs to be fixed.

Remove the slotRadio menu

One of my complaints about the Philips Spark, and a massive complaint with the not-yet-reviewed Archos 5 Android, is the amount of what can only be called “spam” on the player. As Martin put it, we paid for this device- we don’t want a menu item that does nothing but point to a URL for buying slotRadio cards. Include a pamphlet in the box, but don’t hardcode ads into the firmware.

Pan/balance

Some people don’t hear at equal levels on both ears. Some players allow you to compensate for this with a pan/balance setting. This should be a quick thing to implement and make the player more usable to a lot of people, so this one is a no-brainer. It should be standard for all players, really.

Audiobook/podcast track skip confirm and inter-chapter rewinding

On the Philips GoGear Spark, a menu will pop up asking you to confirm whenever you try to skip tracks forward or backwards for an audiobook. This adds a crucial safeguard against suddenly losing the position in a X hour file and having to spend 10 minutes trying to find it again. Make it an optional feature as some people might find it annoying, but it should definitely be an option to get the extra warning. This is my personal biggest gripe against the Clip+ and why I have switched to the Spark for audiobooks.

Another issue is to be able to rewind into the previous track, instead of being stopped at the beginning of the file. Single files don’t often mean much for audiobooks – they’re simply there to make skipping easier – so it doesn’t make any sense to limit rewinding to the current file.

Folder advance

When the Clip+ reaches the end of a folder (when used in file/folder mode), it either loops the folder or stops. There should be an option to let it continue to the next folder.

Last.fm scrobbling

Last.fm has become a giant service that let’s you both track your music habits and find similar music. Unfortunately, close to no player supports this, and those that do have half-hearted methods of doing so (like the iPod), use their own “special” last.fm-ripoff (Zune) or just happen to work with the now-abandoned Zenses. It shouldn’t be too hard to make the player keep track of what is played when, and make a small app that scrobbles this to last.fm. Rockbox already does this on the Clip v1, by writing the info to a text file you can manually upload- surely SanDisk can easily duplicate this even if they don’t make it automatic. Last.fm support can also be marketed as a major feature of the player, as many mainstream consumers would never have heard of last.fm. The potential is huge.

Alphabetical scrolling

The Clip+ has a small screen, but with microSDHC support it can hold a lot of music. Scrolling through lists can take a long time, especially if you have a lot of single tracks (and therefore a lot of different artists/albums) or scroll through all tracks. There are several ways to do this. The Philips GoGear Spark pops up a small window on the screen when scrolling which shows what letter of the alphabet you’re currently scrolling through. This is useful, but doesn’t really speed up the scrolling much. Another way would be to use Sony’s method of scrolling by alphabetical letters, either by setting the volume buttons to do this or toggle alphabet mode on/off with the middle button (since “right” can be used to select, you don’t need to use the middle button for that as well).

Setting sound spectrum display and other things as screensaver

The sound spectrum display is nice, but it’s not really used much. What would be nice would be to be able to set it as a screensaver, so that it could turn on automatically instead of having to trigger it. Other things should also be possible to use as a screensaver, such as a fullscreen clock, song info, upcoming tracks etc. This also means you have to have options for screensaver delay, and of course no screensaver at all.

Better equalizer

This has been an issue with the Clip since the beginning, and other SanDisk players as well. The equalizer is useless, which means that in a lot of cases the excellent sounding Clip+ won’t get recommended to people because the lack of sound enhancement. If you really want to take this point seriously, look into licensing BBE sound effects that Cowon uses. This isn’t proprietary Cowon technology and it’s peculiar how no mainstream brand has adopted what is without a doubt the best sound enhancement technology on the MP3 player market.

More options for long press

Currently, holding down the middle button let’s you add a song to a on-the-go playlist or rate it. This could be allowed to do a variety of things, from directly accessing EQ or song info, forcing the graphic equalizer, delete song, go to album, go to artist etc etc.

More accurate scan speeds

Fast forwarding and rewinding accelerates gradually, which can be a good thing, but also a big annoyance because you overshoot. Allowing the user to “gear” the speed would be preferable, for example by double-clicking and then holding the button to force slow scan speeds while single click and hold is still accelerated.

Customizable playback screen

There’s a lot than can be done with a playback screen. Allowing to select time remaining instead of elapsed time is one. Allowing to select what metadata is displayed (title, artist, album, track number, album artist etc) is another.

Marking listened podcasts/audiobooks

One of my all time favorite features with an iPod is its ability to mark files as listened to so that iTunes can remove them automatically on next sync. While I don’t expect (nor want) SanDisk to make software that auto-removes anything, it shouldn’t be too much work to add a option to enable renaming, deletion or moving of finished files. For example, once a podcast is listened to all the way through the player could rename it from podcast.mp3 to podcast-DONE.mp3. Another option would be auto-delete when finished, and a third option would be to move all finished files to a separate folder. I’m not saying pick one, I’m saying implement them all- people have different preferences. Either way, this would further help the Clip+ become the best non-ipod podcast and audiobook player out there.

Circumventing hold with a button combo

One of the things I like about the iPhone/iPod touch is that if you double-click the home button it brings up playback controls even though the hold is on. I constantly find myself needing to pause the Clip+ in my pocket but doing so requires fishing it up, turning off hold and pausing- takes too long when someone is talking to you. It would be nice to be able for pause the player by double-tapping the middle button. That button combo is hard to trigger accidentally (and it should be an optional feature anyways) and would make it a lot easier to quickly pause the player.

AAC support

iTunes is the biggest music store on the planet, and Apple has 70% of the MP3 player market. Yet the Clip+ don’t allow for using iTunes, nor does it let Apple users easily convert to the CLip+ because it doesn’t support the format needed- AAC. This is however not a free format so the reasons for not supporting it are probably cost related, bit it might be worth it all in all.