Imagine what would happen if someone shrunk an iPod down to half its size (proportionally), turned its circular controller square, and painted it black.  Now imagine you added the clip from the iPod Shuffle. You would now have the Sansa Clip Plus MP3 Player, from the SanDisk company. 

I suppose if you would have to compare the Clip Plus with any Apple product, I suppose the closest would be the Shuffle.  However, the Shuffle doesn’t have a tiny screen that allows for some very convenient and easy navigation. 

In addition to its small size, there is one thing the Sansa Clip has that iPod does not, a card slot.  It is designed to play microSDHC cards, as well as slotRadio and slotMusic cards.  These are microSD cards that come preprogrammed with all sorts of tunes that are ready to play.  I tried these with the slotRadio, and it worked quite well.  It is definitely designed for those who don’t like to work with iTunes, and would rather enjoy a playlist of random tunes rather than a fully customized player. 

Yes, there are people like that out there.  The Sansa Clip Plus can be plugged into a USB to charge, and the user can put in the songs from there by dragging and dropping.  Just so you know, it is compatible with Windows 7.  It is good for about 15 hours worth of battery life after charging. 

In addition to the relatively long battery life, the Sansa Clip Plus has some other things that Apple MP3 players do not have.  Granted, it may not have video footage, but it does have an FM tuner with 40 presets as well as a voice recorder.  I was surprised that they put all of this in something so small, but it seemed to work pretty well, especially the voice recorder with its tiny built-in microphone. 

As for the formats, it supports MP3, WMA, secure WMA, audible, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, and it can do audio books as well as podcasts. 

The Sansa Clip Plus is available in both 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB models.  Respectively, each one can hold 500, 1000, and 2,000 MP3 songs.  As for the WMA songs, their respective numbers of songs are 1,000, 2,000, and 4,000.  The 2GB is $39.99, the 4GB is $49.99, and the 8GB is $69.99.  It usually comes in black, but there are red and blue models.  It can be purchased on the Sandisk website.