Customer Reviews

Philips SA52 8 GB Flash Video MP3 Player with FM Radio and 2.8-Inch Color Screen (Black)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Before I get to the scathing portion of my review, let me highlight the positive things this player has to offer.

***THE POSITIVES***
1) Excellent sound quality. When this player works, the sound it produces is amazing. Philip's Full-Sound Technology offers exactly that: full, three-dimensional sound that gives my music previously unknown depth and clarity.

2) Excellent headphones. In fact, I'm buying the first set that I find, now that I've returned my Philips in favor of Sony's far superior 8 gig player.

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--Please note, the first two negatives are persnickety. The last three are essential.--

***THE NEGATIVES***
1) Player is overly dependent upon the Rhapsody cd. Seriously, it won't work without it. This wouldn't be as problematic if the cd or the setup guide warned you about this, but such is not the case. Instead, the cd-related portion of the setup guide serves as an ad for Rhapsody. I find this practice unethical, as it usurps the user's needs in favor of making a sales pitch.

2) Deceptive drag-and-drop. When I finally installed the components on the cd, I noticed that Microsoft Explorer was suddenly able to see my Philips mp3 player as a device. Furthermore, it could see folders within the player. "Fantastic!" I thought. "I can drag and drop!" Wrong. While it's true that you can drag and drop folders into the player this way, once the information is copied to the player the organization they once had is lost. There are ways around this obstacal, but they all are painful to execute, painful to describe, and painful to read about.

3) Slow load times. There is a noticeable lag that occurs when turning the player on or browsing through music, videos, or pictures. If you're listening to music while you browse, this effect is compounded. Sometimes it even causes your song to skip.

4) Frequent freezing. The thing that really set me against this player is that it freezes. A lot. And by a lot I mean that it froze on me once per session for the last week that I had it.

5) Problematic updates. In an effort to resolve my player's freezing issues, I opted to update my player, but this just made things worse. After updating, the pause feature ceased to function. Whenever I tried to resume a song from a pause, the song would restart from the beginning. It was at this point that I decided "enough" and returned the player.

***CONCLUSION***
The Philips 8 gig mp3 player caused me one problem after another. As soon as I solved one issue, another would arise. I estimate that once all was said and done, I probably spent close to 10 hours trying to get this thing to work. What's more, I was unsuccessful. So unless you are seeking a thankless challenge, do not buy this device.

Simply awful. But to be fair, when it works, it works great. Lots of storage. Until it doesn't work. Often. Too often. Constant resetting of the device when it freezes. Pi** poor customer service. When you try the "repair" feature of the included software, the whole kit and kaboodle freezes up. Which requires another reset, and restarting the software. I think I have a $125 brick now. As bad as the Zune is, I think I should have gone that direction. I hope this review saves people the cursing that I have had to put out in homage to this terrible machine.

I have to agree with the other two reviewers that were NOT happy with this unit. I've owned a Philips portable MP3 CD player as well as a LCD wide screen TV and love both of them. I was optimistic about buying this, compared to my satisfaction with the other two. WRONG!!! This "thing" does not work with either Rhapsody or Windows Explorer. Both recognize it but when dragging and dropping music to the player - Rhapsody freezes up and Windows Explorer just sits there trying to do it but no songs move. Sad. I will be returning this piece of trash ASAP.

I bought it because I had a XX dollars bonus, but I should have trusted the reviews I was reading before buying it.
The most annoying thing is the fact that it takes too much time to switch to a different song or artist. The main menu is not easy to access. It is not possible to choose what to listen to because the player skips any program you set up. So I eventually was listening to the same songs, which the player used to keep on playing when I turned it on.
I bought an Apple i-pod nano, and I'm really happy with it. The menu is easy to use and the quality of the music much better.

**UPDATE**

I'm putting my update on top, instead of at the bottom. My original review is below this update....

I should have kept my mouth shut. After about 2 weeks, my unit starting having similar glitches to what some of the other reviewers have described. And when I use the manager software in "repair" mode, it tells me the unit is reporting an error (doesn't say what error) then proceeds to "repair" the unit by erasing everything on it. In case you're wondering, I scanned all my music to make sure there are no viruses embedded in them. I also had Windows check the device for drive errors. Nothing found. According to the manager software, my firmware is up to date. It happened three times in the last week, and I'm not loading it up again. Back to the store it goes. Too bad, because when it was working, it was fantastic.

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I guess I got lucky. I turned mine on, loaded about 800 songs, and have been bopping happily along. You don't need the CD that comes with it to load music. It acts like a hard drive. Just drag and drop, or syncronize through the Windows media player, or the Napster program. Haven't tried Rapsody or any others... I use WIN XP home edition. They work together perfectly. On the one hand, I've only had it a week. On the other hand, I've been loading songs, videos, organizing folders, deleting stuff, and playing music and videos almost constantly. Not even a hic-up. Perhaps Phillips found and repaired a glitch since the other reviews were written?

The good:
1) VERY-VERY easy to use.
2) OUTSTANDING sound quality. Comes with numerous preset equalizer settings, and one that is able to be customized.
3) Video playback is clear, and not choppy in any way.
4) Earbuds that come with it are decent quality.
5) Controls are easy to use, even with my fat fingers.
6) FM radio has beautiful sound, and has surprisingly good reception.

The Bad:
1 Only one playlist. Besides the playlist, you can shuffle all songs, shuffle by artist, or by album. But having only one playlist is a drag.
2 The supplied video conversion program doesn't convert mp4 unless you pay to upgrade. Sure, I can get a free converter, but that was a stinky trick for Phillips to play.
3) It's difficult to find acessories specific to this model. Maybe that will be better after it's been out longer (???)
4) The equalizer doesn't "remember" what it should be set for on certain songs. If I manually select "Jazz" it stays on Jazz no matter what is playing. Car stereos have been remembering what equalizer setting go with each preset station for years now. It shouldn't have been difficult to program that in song by song. However, it only takes a second to change it.

Overall, I'm blown away with this thing. I recommend it.

THIS IS A GREAT MUSIC PLAYER! I LOVE IT I JUST GOT MINE TODAY,AND IT PLAYS VERY GOOD AND THE EAR PHONES ARE EXCELLENT. I WAS EATING IN THE LOUNGE AT WORK TODAY AND I PUT MY EARPHONES ON AND IT DELETED ALL THE OTHER VOICES AROUND ME AND ALL I CAN HEAR WAS MY MUSIC PLAYER, IT'S LIKE BEING IN A MOVIE THEATHRE AND NOT HEAR ANYTHING BUT THE MUSIC OR MOVIE. GET THIS MP3 PLAYER IT IS THE BOMB!!!

SUSAN AKA CUPCAKE

This was the crappiest piece of equipment i have ever owned. I have had nothing but problems with the device since i bought it.
1. When u are listening to a song and hit the arrow to return to the list of songs while the current one is still playing,if u take to long to select a new song the device will return u to the main menu which wouldnt be a problem if u u didnt have a lot of songs on there but if u do scrolling down to find where u left off is sooo frustrating.

2. The battery sign in the corner is not a true indication of how much battery life u still have. Mine will show it as having little to no battery life for at least 2 weeks and when i charge it up it flashes as being half full or even 3/4 full

3.Sometimes when u download music on ur player it will download a bunch of other meaningless files on there. for instance u have a cd downloaded on ur computer but u dont want it on the philips it will put it up anyway and one time i looked at the pictures on it and found that while it was hooked up to my computer it had downloaded every photo on my computer onto the device.

By this 3rd problem i want to take a hammer to this philips and smash it into a little tiny piece but before i could do that the 4th problem arose.

4. I recently download one new song onto my device and when i turned it on to listen to it i had discovered that it had turned everything in there to japanese writing and every song in there was gone and it keep flashing sync with media player to play this song for all 400 or so songs i have up there.

Stay far away from this device and choose something that wont make ur blood pressure rise

After using it for a little while, I found that it is really having all kinds of functions more than I needed. And it is great for value really.

I started to load movies to there and thanks to the 8GB memory it has, I can load the whole TV drama inside without problem. I try to compare the AVI quality in there to the 3GP quality I use in mobile phone, actually it could show a much better quality and I appreciate. It is because I could look at the movie / video and the subtitles too without problem when commuting to work and back home.

Good for having this device which is value for money.

Sound quality is very good too when turning on the FullSound. Both the base and the treble part I could hear back the detail. Of course, when I load the Album art into such a big screen, it is really an enjoyment to listen to MP3 songs now.

This is the best player I have had. I have went through 4 between my wife and I and this one is the best I have encountered for the price. The [...] deal that we got came at just the right time also because we ended up paying $14.00 for the player all together because we signed up for Audible. The screen color is vibrant. The headphones are wonderful! Couldn't ask for a better player right out the box.

-The GoGear SA52 is built to work with the Rhapsody subscription music service. Subscribers can transfer Rhapsody Channels, songs and albums to the device for a flat monthly fee. No need to buy songs for $.99 each
-Includes a 30 day Rhapsody Free Trial
-Great Sound (uses Full Sound technology)