Customer Reviews

Philips HDD120 Audio HDD MP3 Player (20 GB)

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

 

 

I bought this product at Best-Buy as an exchange item for a Rio Karma jukebox because they didn't have any left in stock.

Let me focus on what's good about this player first, as that will be very easy to cover...

I have to tell you, this has to be the best looking jukebox, and I don't particularly like the iPod.

It has optical / analog input for recording and it also has a built-in mic!

The white/black contrast lcd is to die for, with very nice magnesium casing (nice dark colors too).

But aside from looks, this thing has nothing that beats any other mp3 player..

There is no way to directly start playing songs. You have to first select a playlist or a category, or even the "all tracks" to start playing. If you ever turn it off and then turn it on.. its time to do the same thing again.

I can hear it spin when I try to play a song, and I can feel it rotate the drive reader when it goes to the next song.

Within an hour of handling it, my fingerprints were so over the place and so noticeable, it was driving me crazy.

To add to it, there is no stop button, it never gets as loud as I want it, and it has very crappy visualizations for the songs.

The power button is the play button. What kind of user interface design is that?

The software that you have to use with it crashes everytime I try to use my existing mp3 archive. Even after updating, it does the same thing. To make it work, I had to manually copy my favorite songs into some prespecified folder... Took forever..

I would definitely want my Rio Karma back over this thing. Don't waste money over it. It doesn't come with any fancy features that might interest you. Its just a hard drive with mp3 playback and a good looking cover. That's it.

I'd give this thing a 4.5 if I could... most people are giving this nice little player low marks for the requirement of using Philips' crap-tastic DMM software to transfer files. I almost didn't buy it for that reason, but I found that the people who make the dBPower Amp converter software also make a replacement program to use for transferring files onto the HDD120.

The Sveta Portable Audio program seems to do everything that the DMM didnt... including the ability to transfer my own files to and from my device/PC. It easily allows organization and playlist creation as well as letting you rip CDs directly onto the device.

My local Best Buy had these on clearance for $149... I'd highly recommend getting one at that price if you can!

The Philips 20 GB Jukebox is great if you can get your music on it.

The software you have to use crashes nearly everytime you start it. If you are lucky enough to get into the software you might have a few minutes to put music on the player before it crashes again.

[...]

The player looks and sounds great, but the software is a nightmare [...]

Okay I want to start off being extremely honest. I have bought about 6 portable mp3 players so far, all with large hard drives. I have resell 5 of them so far because either it was not good, too big or not compatible for my computer. My list of mp3 players includes 2 different Nomad Jukeboxes (6 gb), Classic MP3 XP3 player (10 gb), Nomad Jukebox Zen (20gb) and the all time infamous IPOD by apple (10 gb). SO I assure you I know what the hell I'm talking about.

First off, the Philips Jukebox is beautiful. I have literally had friends of mine who own Ipods, ask if they can trade me for their mp3 player based on its look alone. Now honestly, you can't set the equalizer settings unless you are on the computer at the time, so if you are a custom person this may be a problem. Now... at first I admit, I have to call Philips because I encountered a problem with track loading. However the everwonderful Philips team helped me.

When I load my songs, there is this very simple program called DMM by Philips. You load the tracks onto the computer locate them through this program and do a quick drag and drop. You disconnect it from the computer and all your tracks are loaded! The start up screen is very easy and simple to read. First there's playlists, then artists, albums, tracks, genres and recordings, all subjects that you can go under. And um oh yeah, did I mention the BUILT IN RECORDER, its fabulous and everything comes in crisp and clear I stood away from it and I could literally pick up the conversation perfectly.

The superSCROLL is awesome. Simply press down half way for normal scroll and down all the way for Super Scroll. And there is also this wonderful equilizer that appears when playing songs.

Hands Down I would definetly buy a Philips Jukebox HDD120.

bought an hdd120 about a mounth ago and it is a truely great product. the main reason why i bought it is its small size, storage capacity, microphone, and looks. it is a solid and durible little thing. it fits more than nicely in my pocket. eazy to use. as beautiful an the ipod in my opinion and some of my friends say it looks better. the microphone feature is really great. works as an external hard drive. sound quality is good. costs less than the ipod ($300 at best buy) and i could go on for a while.

my only problem now is a weak headphone amp so if you like to listen to your music loud then do not buy this.

it also took me a while to get it perfect but once you do it is great. do not downlod the latest firmware or you might run into a 2second pause glitch. downlad the 4.0 firmware @ http://www.cgbox.com/hdd100/philips4.zip i dont know what they did but it is a lot better than 6.6. i allso havent had aneylockups with 4.0. the hdd1*0 attracts fingerprints. screen can be hard to read in dim light with out the backlight but is really clear with the backlight. it could use ogg and lossless audioformats. the dmm software only recignized my music when it was in its default folder.

it was worth it, now i dont have to carry my 10lb cd wallet everywhere i go, being a biker that much stuff is a hassle.

I mulled over a jukebox for a while and finally settled on this. The product is greatlooking, but the software belongs to a former decade. It does have a major downturn which no one has mentioned it is not skip resistant, so if you jog forget it. Overall looks great, but needs serious improvement on many of its features. And there is a way to upload to your computer all your playable songs, but I can't tell because I respect copyright. JAJAJA. It is pretty easy though, just think....

As mentioned by several others the software is terrible, the device locks up and can't be restarted until the battery is completely dead, but by far the worst thing is that when the battery does actually die and fails to retain a charge, you have to return it to Philips and they charge $143.73 to replace the battery!!

My advise: DO NOT buy the Philips HDD line unless you are looking to spend $200+ on a "throw away" MP3 player.

Pros:

-mp3 recording(mic, optical and line in)

-plays mp3 and WMA

-acctualpartitioned disk space:18.9 gig

-very bright backlight

-easy to use interface, great ipod alternative\

-nice looking, almost identicle size to 3G/4G ipod

-remote included, good audio quality

Cons:

-horrible software, i use a thirdparty software media manager

-shows wear more because of dark color

-a little bit slower than an ipod

overall a great product, i reccomend it if you want an HD player, and want lots of good features

The software was hard to use at first. But the Phillips Techs helped me out. But I didn't have to upgrade Windows to XP. So that's a plus Windows ME worked just fine.

I use it on my Motorcycle, so being compact is a plus, and the battery lasts for about 10 hours. (is there going to be a automotive charger for it?) No problems with skip so far.

The bass boost and equalizer is a nice feature. All in all I'm very pleased with this product.

*** Updated August 9, 2004 ***
With a heavy heart, I returned my HDD120 today. It had developed a habit of locking up, sometimes for days at a time (and the button combo to reset it didn't work either). This was a great piece of equipment... had everything I wanted except drag-and-drop music play. I guess the technology just isn't ready yet; I won't be buying *any* other microdrive-based jukebox for at least a few years.

*** Original review, April 25 2004 ***
There's no need to talk about the aesthetics, since everyone else has basically said it's the best-looking player out there with the possible exception of the iPod.

I just got it today, and I bought it for the hard drive space, the USB mass storage capability, and the recording capabilities (including the built-in mic). So far, it performs just fine on all counts, and the hard drive is very, very quiet.

One side note: my model number is the hdd120/17, coming after hdd120/00 and hdd120/05. This leads me to believe they've had some upgrades since this line started.

As you might expect from Philips, the sound quality is great (Barenaked Ladies never sounded better) the recording with onboard mic is remarkably good, and the controls are pretty intuitive. The menu system, like any other, takes a few minutes to get used to, but after that you're good to go.

I really wish Philips would step up their marketing of this device (give it a better name)! After seeing the user community around the Rio products (didn't choose the Karma since it lacked several essential features I listed above and also seemed to have a very scratchable front panel), I would love to see one tenth of that user support for this player.

One star deducted for three things:
1) Lack of backlight for the buttons. This is relatively minor, because if you've used the interface for more than a few minutes, you know which button is which.
2) You can't drag music files through the file system if you want to play them; you have to use their DMM software. I assume this is because the onboard database needs to be notified of these new tracks, but couldn't the player (either automatically or on command) do a search for music files and add them to the DB? Not a terrible loss, since the software is easy to use, and for use on other machines, I can just copy the whole installation CD to my HDD player!
3) I want a better case than this drawstring bag (which at least has two pockets). Maybe I'll find one at Fry's.

Too bad I can't give it 4.5 stars. I would. We'll see how it holds up; I got the extended warranty at Best Buy (recommended for anyone buying a portable device with a hard drive) so if things go bad I'll come back and tell you if the second one fared better. Otherwise I'll try to remember to praise its longevity as well.