My 8GB+32GB Fuze’s battery has just given up the ghost so I’m on the look out for a replacement player and I’m considering the Clip Zip. I mainly use my player powered at home and in the car (shame the Fuze refreshes media every time I connect it now or could still use it).
I know I’ll lose the docking with a Clip Zip, but I’ve heard that turning volume to zero will give you a near-line-out experience from the headphone jack. Is this so? I can just power it via USB I guess.
Is the Clip Zip restricted to 1000 song playlists like the Fuze? My Fuze has 1000 song limit for M3Us and PLAs (despite what some people on here state about unlimited M3U lists). I use Playlists as a way of using multiple/combined genres so quite a few lists hit above the 1000 mark.
At the end of the day I just want something I can plug in to the car or home stereo, pick a playlist and hit random play (not shuffle like Rockbox).
Why not just get another Fuze? Granted, they aren’t as widle available as they used to be and you may have to settle for a smaller memory size or a re-furbed one, but with some dilligence and patience I’m sure you could find one.
Buying another Fuze is always an option, but I’d like to see if there’s anything else that will fix the few niggles I had with the Fuze. The 1000 song playlist limit has become a real pain that I’d like to see the back of.
I can buy a Fuze new from Amazon.co.uk (I’m in the UK) but how old is the stock likely to be? Surely the chances of battery failure is just going to increase with buying referb or new-old-stock?
I don’t remember exactly, but I think the Zip’s playlist limit is either the same (1000) or maybe 1100. Note, you will want to update to the latest firmware version. The orginal firmware that came on the first Zips out of the factory were fine, but subsequent f/w updates broke the playlisting capabilities. Surprisingly, this was not discovered or reported until a few updates had already occurred. It was reported here; a few of us tested and confirmed .m3u playlists did not work (even those created under the original firmware) and to SanDisk’s credit, they quickly responded with an update to fix the issue. That update is the latest one you will find here on the forum.
If you buy a Fuze yes, it is going to be old stock and while it’s true that Li-Poly batteries will lose some of their charge even while not being used, it’s much less degradation than repeated charging and discharging. However even given that possibility, you’re still likely to get more playing time out of an old Fuze than a new Clip Zip as the player (and battery) is half the size of the Fuze.
