Mini Clip MP3 Player, Portable Wearable MP3 Player with FM

Useable
I spotted this Swofy as a potential replacement for my wonderful but ageing Sansa Clip which isn’t lasting very long any more with its battery life. The Clip now lives in the car where a power bank assists it for battery power – but that’s a bit clunky so I’m hoping to replace it. My son ordered the Swofy for me as a present.

It’s the same kind of design and size as the Clip (10% bigger, say), plays all 1000s of tracks on shuffle (with a 5-band EQ) as per my requirement, has a more modern display, and the on/off switch is a good positive slide one compared to the the Clip’s “lean on me for a while” push button. Also the Swofy resumes playing on switch-on from where it was on switching off, like the Clip. So far so good – and the audio sounds OK too. All my many GB’s of music copied onto the stock Swofy from the PC in about an hour, with room to spare – compared to the Clip which was running out of space even with an extra card in it.

The Clip does a brilliant job of transitions from one track to the next, it’s like having my own personal radio station sometimes.

The Swofy though, for some reason best knowm to themselves, doesn’t play each track at full volume right from the start. There’s a quick fade-in, which doesn’t seem like the end of the world but you do lose the initial crash of percussion on tracks that start with some attack. Over the years I created all my MP3s to have at least 0.15 seconds of silence at the start, because VLC player was as bad too (WinAmp is fine!), so to still suffer this kind of ineptitude from a player is very annoying!

I can just about live with that, but it spoils my musical enjoyment every time I notice it – which is rather often.

I’ve saved the biggest annoyance until last – the reason why this is NOT a full replacement for the Clip…

How many button presses do you think are reasonable to skip to the next track? With the Clip, one button press is enough – at any time – to bypass a track I’m not interested in, and get to the next.

The Swofy designers though, had other ideas, for reasons best known to themselves ….
1 press to wake it up and light up the screen again
1 more press to get back to the playing mode display
1 more press finally does the trick to change anything (forwards, back, pause, etc.)

That’s absurd, and utterly unacceptable. Why oh why can’t that kind of annoyance at least be a configurable option somewhere in the menus?

Oh, and don’t forget that these players aren’t as good as a phone if you’re hoping to use the buttons on your earbuds lead to pause or skip tracks either (the Clip didn’t allow that either, to be fair). You’re better off using an old phone for your music in that case.

It's a tiny beauty.. I love it!!
Really love this little guy! Looks lovely and slick. It’s super easy to plug in your pc/laptop and transfer over music files etc.. What’s great also is that although you can pop in an extra micro SD card for extra file storage, you don’t need to straight away. As it has 31gb(you never get the full advertised GB) of inbuilt storage capacity without any SD card inserted. The blue tooth range is very good too, as it’s Bluetooth connectivity 5 that it uses, so pretty good. I tested it out with my sound core mini wireless speaker and it wasn’t until I went in the garden with speaker, and I’d left the mp3 player upstairs on landing that it started loosing connection. So Bluetooth very good with this too. The wired ear phones it comes with are actually quite comfortable with my ears, and are very good quality for freebies. So I often just clip the player on one of my trouser pockets, and use the wired ears phones it came with throughout the day to listen to my music etc..

So all in all I am super happy with this player, I have two of these clip mp3 players now, and they both really good for listening to music on. And they are quite cheap for how helpful they are.. The only downside I would say(and I am being picky now) is that sometimes the buttons do feel about fiddly to press. As it is so tiny, sometimes it can be easy to press the wrong button etc.. I do have large hands myself, so I do find myself having to concentrate a tad harder making sure I press the right button I want to etc.. But this is being picky and it doesn’t really bother me tbh, because in every other way this is a great little player. But I can imagine someone with fat fingers(no disrespects intended) struggling with this aspect though, so I thought it worth mentioning..
All in all I think this is awesome and I love it though! 5stars for me

Surprisingly good sound!
I ordered this, as I was in need of a player with bluetooth, in order to try out some bluetooth ear pods (reviewed separately) I already have a similar player that has far fewer features than this one, so i wanted to see if this one would sound better too.
Use
This comes in a box with wired headphones (dubious quality) a 3.5mm jackplugged cable for direct connections and a USB C charge cable. I soon had it up and running with a 64Gb micro SD card I already had for my previous player (why do they call these “TF cards” now?) after a quick charge it was ready to go. It has 7 buttons on the front and a volume switch on the side plus a slide switch for on/off at the top.
After a bit of faffing around I managed to figure out how to get the music playing – it is fairly simple once you have worked out what the buttons do! I managed to get it paired with the ear pods with no bother at all, and once I had got the hang of how they worked too, I was away. I have also tried this with the wired earbuds as well (mainly to test FM radio, as they are needed to act as an aerial for the radio)
I must say the sound on this is pretty good, and for the money this costs, I think it is outstanding value, and I shall be using this a lot in the future I think.
It has an internal memory, (which I didn’t try) of 32Gb, which is fine to start off with, and supports several codecs, including up to 320bps MP3s which mine happen to be.
The player itself is truly tiny, ie it would fit into a matchbox, this means a tiny screen, its true, but though a bit grainy the screen is adequate as a text display to see what tracks you are playing, it also plays videos too, but sideways, as the screen ration is around 4:3, I regard this as a bit of a gimmick, like most of the other features, like calendar, pedometer etc, I think as a music player its perfectly fine. Incidentally they do offer one with a touchscreen, but I think that might be a pest if you pop it in your pocket and it starts skipping tracks etc – I think you know where you are with the buttons on this model.
Conclusion
If you just want a cheapo MP3 player that plays your MP3s off of a micro SD card up to 128Gb very well, this is what you need! I found it worked very well indeed with some budget ear pods via bluetooth and I was truly surprised at the sound quality I got from it. No idea how long it’ll last, but I still have a similar one I bought a couple of years ago (different make) and it still works fine.

Reminds me of my old SansaClip!
This is never going to be an iPod or as convenient as a touch screen player, but nevertheless this is still a decent buy, especially as iPods are being phased out. It reminds me quite a lot of my old Sansa Clip (in a good way!) which we were more than happy with back in the day!

Sound quality is good on both MP3s and radio, navigation is easy if a little basic. Loading with files was simple. Playlists are a sticking point though; adding each song manually to a numbered but unnamed list is going to be annoying so I’ll probably only ever use this on shuffle all. Despite that, I think overall it does a good job and I will happily use this as my back-up player.

Swafy Brand MP3 Player with FM Radio, Recording and assorted menus
Swafy branded MP3 player. Nicely packaged in a gift box with all leads, instruction manual and a basic pair of wired headphones (earbuds style).

MP3 players may have gone out of fashion with the huge increase in smart phone sales and use, not to mention their large capacity to store music, videos, books. However, after examining this MP3 player and I can see that there is still a market for these little pieces of tech and they certainly come into their own when exercising and not being able to carry a phone around, or just wanting something small and leave the large phone in a pocket or bag.

This model has a huge number of menus and, although relatively easy to go from one to the other, it does take a small learning curve to know what button to press and when. Note, the on/off is a tiny slider at the top of the player.

As well as storing a huge amount of music on the generous 32GB of storage built in (which can also be increased up to a massive 128GB by inserting a memory card), as well as music, there is an FM radio (although you must use wired headphones for radio since they also act as the receiving aerial), an audio recorder (to record your voice, for instance), a pedometer (ideal if you need to know how many steps you have taken), a clock, a stopwatch, calendar, plus facilities to see small videos or read e-Books on the tiny screen. All features are available through the menus and sub-menus, like all tech, a learning curve is necessary so that you remember where each setting is. The instruction book is quite thick but it is divided into many different languages. For my part, I found the English and it really is only a couple of pages long.

The player came almost fully charged and so I was able to get using it straight away. Firstly, I plugged the USB C lead (enclosed) into the player and then the standard USB 2 plug into my desktop. It was recognised immediately as an external drive and so it was easy to copy over a few folders of music for the trial run – and the copy was quite quick, I was surprised. By the way, when I plugged it into the computer it immediately went to charging mode. Simply press the button on the right of the bottom set of buttons to return to the normal display.

Using the wired headphones that come with the player, it was easy enough to adjust the volume (rocker switch on the right hand side). The sound was reasonable but I sure wouldn’t expect much more than that from small, inexpensive buds. But at least it showed the player worked first time.

There is a basic equalizer (if you can find it, I came across it by pure accident) and, as you can see from my pictures, this really is a small item so the screen itself is small. I could read it well enough, there was more than enough backlight on the screen and, from the main menu, it really is easy to tap left or right to go through the different options. When you get to the menu you want – Music, for example – there are several sub-menus such as shuffle, repeat, play song, play folder and so forth. Quite a bit for the new user to experiment with.

Given how small the screen is, I doubt if I would ever use it to view video or read e-Books, it is just too small for me, but it is still useful.

On the back of the player is a large clip that runs almost the whole length. This is perfect for fixing the player onto your clothes, an armband, belt, and is especially useful for exercise where a phone would be too bulky and heavy.

So far so good, and I found it quite straightforward to work through menus and select different options. It is the sub-menus that will require memorising, but no different to any other piece of tech. If anything, I would have a preference for having this on display rather than my hugely expensive smart phone, for obvious reasons.

Finally, bluetooth – and this is why I gave only 4 stars and not 5. It is a right pain! Easy enough to find the correct menu from the main screen, easy enough to go to the sub-menu to search for bluetooth options in the vicinity (here, meaning, earbuds or headphones), and easy also to select which one to use if you have already stored several different types. Again, so far so good… but it wasn’t. I tried two pairs of inexpensive but decent earbuds (price range of around 30 each), a better quality pair of earbuds (priced at over 90), and a very decent pair of headphones (priced at over 100). Out of the 4 different styles, only the expensive pair of earbuds were picked up and paired by this MP3 player – and I tried numerous times. However, the instructions clearly state that if using bluetooth headphones ensure that they are disconnected from your smart phone (and likely tablet also). I disconnected and “forgot” all of the buds and headphones I tested yet still only the more expensive buds would pair. Great – but it wasn’t great because even paired with the MP3 player there was absolutely no sound at all coming through.

Setting up the bluetooth was easy, pressing for it to search for bluetooth items nearby was easy, getting it to pair and remember even just the one pair of buds was easy, but that was it, silence. Now this could be my own fault, I might have missed a setting or not pressed a button somewhere, but I did find it extremely strange. For instance, I re-paired the expensive headphones to my smart phone which was in the lounge and instantly had the last radio station I listened to coming through (and I was about 15 or so meters away in another room!). I may have to play around a bit more with the MP3 player, it might not like any of my bluetooth buds or headphones, but it does work when wired.

To be honest, I did find this difficulty in pairing and setting up for bluetooth headphones a great disappointment. Additionally, if users have to either turn off their phones and tablets before connecting to this MP3 player and leave them off for as long as the player is within around 30m of the phone (or else turn off bluetooth on the phone and tablet), it does render this tech extremely limited. There was nothing further in the instructions to guide this bluetooth set-up, the whole thing is designed to be painless. It will need a bit more experimenting but, perhaps, simply turning off bluetooth on my phone and tablet would work – although that means I couldn’t use any other accessories for that time. I am not marking any of this down as a negative. My needs are likely very different from the needs of other people so please don’t let my initial experience put you off this player. I simply write out for this review the different steps I tried and what the results were.

What can you buy for twent odd pounds? Hardly anything now! Priced at 26.99 at the time of this review, I have to say it is quite a remarkably low price given what this little player can do. I recall MP3 players being highly popular some 15-20 years ago and they cost a lot more than this back then so don’t let the low price lead you to thinking this is a low quality item, because it isn’t, it is pretty good at what it does and is definitely worth the money. 32GB is a lot of memory to start of with and you could store thousands of tracks. For people who want more memory – perhaps for video – appropriately sized memory cards are not expensive at all now (see the instruction manual for full details of size and requirements), and that would mean tens of thousands of music tracks, for instance.

All in all, and in spite of my hair pulling trying to get any of my 4 bluetooth buds and headphones to work correctly at first attempt, I would certainly recommend this product. It is very useful, does far more than you would expect at this price, and the sturdy clip at the back will surely keep it safe when worn.