I’ve posted this information on Amazon. I am repeating it here in the hope of getting corrections. Thanks in advance.
This post is to help people who are used to the Sansa Clip+ get used to the new Sansa Clip Jam if they need a new player. I had to give up using my Clip+ because the contact with an inserted earphone plug became dicey and I had sound dropouts. This seems to happen after a few years of pulling in and out such plugs on a daily basis. That is because I use the player in my car, with different earphones and at my computer. I doubt there is a way that such a problem can be easily fixed.
So I sprung for a new Clip Jam and after using it for a week or so, here is what I have figured out.
- The manual you can download from the Sansa website is misleading at best and useless at worst.
- To power off/on you press the big button in the center, where the old select button was. You better pause before you power off and press resume after powering on.
- There is a new back button that when clicked takes you to the preceding menu. Holding it for a couple of seconds locks/unlocks the other controls which is convenient to prevent accidental activation.
- Your album and title tags will appear truncated on the display so you should make sure that different books differ in the first 10 characters of the Album tag, but I think tags work pretty much as on the Clip+ . Playing order is determined by the Track tags which need to be justified with leading zeros.
- After playing the final track of a book, the Jam starts playing the first.
- The following is on page 23 or the manual: “Quick Tips: to ensure files sorter (sic) correctly, file should not exceed 16 characters long or use ID3 tags.” This makes no sense since Sansa players use tags, not file names. Also, I did not delete my ID3 tags and the tracks in my books still play in order.
- If you use a car or wall charger you will need one with a mini sized USB terminal. The female USB on the Clip+ is the larger sized one which seems to be obsolete now.
- After charging your Clip Jam on your PC and letting the media refresh, you are sent to the Books display. Then you must manually navigate to the audiobook and track you were at. Once you are back at the track, it will give you the option of resuming play at the point you were at or starting from the track’s beginning.
- There is a 500 limit on the number of tracks that will be displayed. I was playing a book with 87 tracks but it showed only 33 tracks and went back to track 1 after it finished track 33. I had to delete another book so I could get all 87 tracks. I understand if you use an external memory chip you have an additional 500 track allotment.
By the way, after getting used to the differences, I am happy. The sound is good and I paid the same as I did for the Clip+ when the latter was new, and got 8G storage versus 4G for the Clip+.
