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I loved the SanDisk Sansa Clip Zip players I owned during past years. They needed to be reflashed with the RockBox firmware (but tbh pretty much every portable
by squarefoot 5y ago
I loved the SanDisk Sansa Clip Zip players I owned during past years. They needed to be reflashed with the RockBox firmware (but tbh pretty much every portable player firmware is inferior to RockBox) however hardware wise they were fantastic: light, well shaped, buttons in the right places, very readable display despite the small size, audio was excellent, FM reception too, battery lasted hours and hours. I brought them on the beach and kept them running for hours while sunbathing or walking like 1 meter above sea level, and they worked for years. I had to ditch them eventually when the headphone jack began to fail, but that happened when the battery had already became old and other buttons unreliable, so repair which was often destructive was out of question. Unfortunately SanDisk cut corners in later models (less RAM, smaller CPU etc.) and RockBox became harder or impossible to install, so I got a much cheaper Agptek player, which can't run RockBox as well but costs a fraction, and that's it.
- SparkyMcUnicorn 5y agoI forgot about this. Sansa with RockBox was the best.
- Paul_S 5y agoSame here, I bought 4 more when they discontinued it, gave away a couple and the rest died by now. Why can't a company make something like this again?
- yobbo 5y agoApparently, the SOC used in sansas was EOLed, and the newer ones use a cheaper and much less capable chip common in chinese music players. Attempting a rockbox port was deemed wasted effort. There doesn't seem to exist an off-the-shelf SOC comparable to the original. The more expensive audiophile-orientated players use more power-hungry mips SOCs running linux, and the product is then designed to justify the expense and bulky battery.
- raffraffraff 5y agoI bought a bunch of Sansa Clip+ when they were being discontinued because they were dirt cheap and with Rockbox and a huge sdcard, they "rocked". My last one died about a year ago :( I didn't go for the Agptek because they can't run RockBox, and I got bitten very badly by the awful ui on a Shanling player. So I bought a teensy Jelly Pro and hacked it into my favourite ever mp3 player.
- walterbell 5y agoRecent discussion of MP3 players, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26870648 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26870648