Sylvania SMP2012 2 GB Clip MP3 Player (Blue)

I purchased this fine product to replace my (lost) ipod shuffle. Unfortunately, only 1.5 months after purchase and 4 attempted uses, the only thing I have from this purchase is a flashy binder clip.Here are the major features:1. Stops working after only 4 uses.2. Can't handle skipping songs in rapid succession. (Will just play the first second of the song before moving on). This is particularly annoying because of...3. No shuffle feature.4. Self draining battery. Feature is available even when the MP3 player is turned off.I discovered the second feature while on a run, and the irritation of hearing the first second of each song provided great motivation for my workout. I also just discovered feature one, and the frustration of burning $12 makes me want to go to the gym.So in short, this MP3 player has all of the features you need for motivated workouts. Be advised that the player will only be able to motivate you 2-3 times before running out of power.

This is a very basic mp3 player and just what I wanted. It is tiny, at about 1 inch by 1 1/2 inches and is feather-light. The battery is built-in and rechargeable, which is one of the big selling points for me. It fully charges in about 30 minutes and is ready to play. Actually, it charged while I loaded songs, as well as sermons, on it. I am pleased with the sound quality, of both spoken audio, as well as music.I am not a "high-tech" person, so the ease of operation is much appreciated. There is no software to download. My computer recognized it as an external removeable device and transferring files was simple.The earbuds that come with it are inexpensive but the sound quality from them is better than an inexpensive set I had purchased from a local store. They may be a bit uncomfortable for individuals with small ear openings, as do I, but they are not intolerable.This player is going with me everywhere and stores in a side pocket in my purse with room to spare.My husband borrowed it when he went for a run and he was impressed with the sound quality for such an inexpensive unit. He now wants one, so I ordered one for him.With the earbuds in place and the player clipped to your pocket, you can be assured it's not going to fall off as you exercise. The clip is very secure.I have purchased an audio auxillary plug, so I can plug this into my car stereo and play all my favorite songs without having to lug my CD case with me. Of-course this is much more portable and I won't have to change discs frequently to hear my favorites. They are all loaded on this little unit and I can plug and play. This is going to work well for my husband, who is an avid fisherman, and on the lake a lot. At this price we can afford to replace it if it happens to get wet and he won't have to worry about damaging his CDs or having radio options only.As an aside, I appreciate the reviews offered for products and services, because I do a lot of online shopping, and it is helpful in deciding what purchases to make sight unseen. So, "thank you" to all who write reviews.

Here's the deal. Know what you are buying and you should like it, assuming you get a working unit. I purchased 30 of these for a trade school in Haiti (3 were defective, more on that in a bit). We are running English lessons on them. I chose this unit because it was something the students couldn't tamper with (delete tracks, record their own memos, listen to the radio) like they could on many other mp3 players. On top of that, it's durable (aluminum frame) if dropped, has basic controls, and usually just works. It has a rechargable battery so you don't chew through AAA batteries and it has a decent volume range. The clip is strong as well.The battery life stinks. In a world where iPod Shuffle has a 15 hour battery and the Nano has a 24 hour battery, this unit's 4 hour battery is laughable. But at 1/4 the price of the shuffle and 1/10 the price of the Nano, I can live with having to charge this unit after each class.Of the 30 we purchased, 3 were defective out of the box. 1 in 10... 10%. Not a great Quality Assurance test score there Sylvania. That being said, Amazon's replacement process is quick and painless and they even cover shipping. 2 of the defective units wouldn't power off of the battery and had to be plugged in to work, despite the battery having a full charge. The other defective unit wouldn't come on unless you squeezed the sides first (I'm guessing a loose internal connection). Hopefully the replacement units are a better ratio or 1 of those 3 could be bad as well. ;-)The unit definitely has it's quirks and it appears it went through multiple hardware revisions. About half of the units I bought came in packaging with rounded top plastic cases and the other half were smaller rectangular cases. The older round top cases were mostly USB 1 speed devices. For me, this didn't matter much as after I copied my 210MB of data to them, I was done. But if you buy one and plan on constantly changing songs on it, USB 1 is simply not acceptable. Late in the rounded case run (later serial numbers) they went to USB 2 speeds. There is no differentiating the two hardware revisions from what I could see other than serial numbers which look VERY MUCH the same still. The newer packaging (rectangle) seemed to all be USB 2 speed devices. To give you an example on why this matters, copying my 210MB of data took about 5min on USB 1 and about 45 sec on USB 2. If I were filling this device up with 2,048MB (2GB) as it can hold, this is a difference of nearly 49 minutes vs 7 minutes to fill the device with data. Though, truthfully this unit only holds about 1.85GB of data for the record.As for the quirks I mentioned:- The manual is a sheet of paper that has basic instructions that aren't even correct. It says you need to turn the unit's power switch on to charge it... you don't.- The manual says if you have an external USB/AC charger, it shouldn't exceed 350mA... which is odd since the USB spec is 500mA. I used 500mA just fine.- If you plug it into a 500mA (not sure on 350mA) charger, the unit turns on and starts playing songs even if the power switch is in the off position. I advise you to hit pause on the player to stop playback so the blinking green light goes solid (it blinks while playing).- The manual says the red light goes off when done charging and it should only take 15-20 min to charge... it never goes off even after multiple hours, despite the unit having a full charge.- Adding songs to this (or any cheap mp3 player) results in the songs being put in a random order on the player. They DO NOT PLAY in alphabetical order by filename or what-not, but rather go in the order they were added to the device (usually). It's complicated... but there are ways to force things into the order you want.I found in Windows 7 64bit I had to open my folder with all my files I wanted to transfer, click on the 2nd track and hold down shift while holding down the down arrow to scroll to the last track (so now 2-59 are highlighted), then hold down CTRL and click the 1st track so it's the last one selected. Now all are highlighted... right click and copy, then paste to the device's drive in My Computer. This now pastes them 1-59 in the correct order. I have no clue why. If I just did a select all/copy/paste, they went in random orders on the player (track 17-24, then 1-16, then 25-59, or other odd stuff). If I did 1-59 with the shift key (didn't start with track 2) then it put 59 first, then 1-58 last. Fun, eh? (Note: It always shows up correct in Windows. It's only when playing back that you hear it's in the wrong order.)Another alternative is to get a program like "FAT-32 Sorter" (FAT32Sorter.exe - google it) and that can re-arrange tracks on the device by alphabetical filename order too. I tried a dozen or so programs that claimed they could and that's the only one I had success with. The site is very techy, so scroll to the bottom if you want to see screenshots of this simple to use program... You just need to run it in a command prompt (start-run-cmd) then hit option 1 to select whatever drive letter your player is, then option 5 to sort it. Option 4 saves a text file of what the current order is as well. Option 6 exits.EVEN AFTER you do all that, this player has a built in feature that you need to know. It "remembers" where to start playing from when you first turn on the power switch, regardless of what order you have your files in. If you cut the power switch off and back on, it always starts from this memory point. If you want it to remember a new point, you need to get to it, then hold down the play/pause button for a few seconds until the unit stops playing. Just tapping it (pausing only) won't do. Hold it down. Now when you cut power off/on, it will start at that point. This is handy if you are using this player as a workout music source or something and don't want to always listen to the same 20min of songs while running. Just set your ending point there as your new start point for your next workout.Yes, the earbuds stink. They all do in this price range. Buy some new ones, or just live with airplane movie quality earbuds.The navigation is slow. Each track fades out and then the next fades in. You can't jump ahead 2 or more tracks by fast clicking the button as you have to wait for each to come up before skipping again. That's kind of annoying but not a deal breaker at this price point.My only "wish" for this is that it had an LCD screen to simply show the track title that was playing. But alas, nothing does without adding in FM radio, track management options, voice recorders, etc... that I didn't want. A voice feedback of battery level or a meter of some kind would have been nice too. Oh well. ;-)

I really like this MP3 player because it's low tech and I'm pretty low tech. I only use it for about one audiobook a month, though. That said, it's more than likely not an ideal choice for everybody. Charging is awkward since it has to be on to charge, and the instructions didn't really explain this well. Also, the volume doesn't go up very high, which makes listening to Sherlock Holmes at the gym rather difficult sometimes. If you are looking for a device for constant use, go ahead and look elsewhere. This was perfect for me though because I hardly needed to use it and it was inexpensive and pretty easy to figure out.