Before I bought my Sansa Clip, I mainly listened to music on my Galaxy S2, or on my pc using any old headphones I could find. As a Producer of music however, I found the sound quality on most phone's to be sub-par or muffled and distorted at loud volumes. I'm also very keen on uncoloured music (music players that have a almost flat frequency response and let you hear the music as the artist intended). So after finding out this little MP3 player had one of the best DAC's (digital audio converter) on the market, I decided to splash out the lowly £20 it cost to buy and my god was it worth it.

I will admit the stock headphones are OK but nothing special, when I plugged in the headphones I received with my Galaxy S2 however I was blown away. Nice, clear and loud are the best words to sum up this little MP3 player. And when coupled with some decent in ear monitors (I'm now rocking some Brainwavz M2's) this thing really comes to life. Battery life isn't as long as say a Cowon J3. The Sansa last's me roughly 14 hours, the Cowon J3 can run around 45 hours, but its as big as a phone and costs upwards of £170 for the 32GB version. The clip, with internal memory at 4GB plus a £22 32GB MicroSD Card from Sandisk is a big saving (£42) when compared to £170.

The screen is little but its just the right size for me. It's simple to pick tracks using the navigation buttons and the blue font shows up nice and clearly. Transferring of music is simple too. I just simply drag and drop my organized music folders into the external memory card I bought and rescan the Sansa for new files. Recently I modded my Sansa Clip (THIS VOIDS WARRANTY - But the process is easy and the benefits are high) with Rockbox. The Rockbox EQ is head and shoulders above the stock EQ and many people with the extremely expensive Cowon J3 also prefer Rockbox on their product. Rockbox add's so many more features to the Clip should you take the risk, but that is a discussion for another day.

I will be honest and say to this day I have not even bothered with the radio function. All the music I want I already have and the sound quality of radio regardless of device leaves a lot to be desired for me.

Overall the Sansa Clip is a superb MP3 player. You don't often hear the words "Cheap" and "Amazing Quality" in the same sentence but it can be said for the Sansa Clip. More than enough options for the average music listener, whilst it also boasts the sound quality for the beginner music enthusiast. Coupled with some proper in ear monitors and it's sound quality really shines. To put it bluntly, crap headphones will sound crap on the Sansa Clip, good headphones will sound amazing on it.