Customer Reviews

Philips PSA232 Active Range Sport MP3 Player with FM Tuner (Silver/Orange)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

The Philips PSA232 is not the worst MP3 I've ever encountered, but it's certainly far from good. I purchased this model (on clearance, not surprisingly as it turns out) and returned it three weeks later. The main problems: 1) As everyone has mentioned, the battery life is terrible. Even rechargable batteries often lasted only 3 hours. 2) Using a miniSD card to increase the storage introduces its own problems. I often had to reformat the card after songs had been transferred because Windows Media Player crashed during a transfer. 3) The player can be very picky about ID3 tags. If they are too long, or have unsupported data tags, the songs will not play on the device (even though the files are clearly listed on the player). So save yourself the aggravation and shop for a better model.

Its consume 1 battery for 4hours of music, i think that is so much. The FM also has very bad quality.

I love the size of this player and it's easy to use features. However, the main problem I encountered was downloading purchased songs to it. It kept freezing up and scanning through all the songs without playing them. I bought several songs from Rhapsody that I wanted to put on my mp3. Even though Rhapsody songs are listed as being compatible with this device,...no such luck. My husband had to convert all my Rhapsody songs (which was a huge pain in the butt), burn them to a cd, and then move them to my mp3 player. Since then, it's only frozen once and we had to delete everything off and start again to fix it. :-/

I purchased three of these MP3s--One for me and two for my two children. One of the battery covers did not fit correctly and within one month of purchasing it, it fell off the product and got lost. I called Philips to try to purchase a new battery cover. I was told they do not sell it separately and the best they could do would be to exchange the product "out of warranty" for $75!! That was almost what I paid for the product! Also, the battery life is TERRIBLE. Even with rechargeable batteries, we go through them like water. I would avoid this product like the plague!

This Mp3 Player does have alot of problems but those can be fixed.
1. The battery life does suck but after you buy yourself one of those 15 minute rapid chargers that really is not a problem anymore.
2. It sometimes does not let you play your music. After this happen to me i went out and bought a ipod which i did not like and took back. When this mp3 player frezzes on you all you have to do is use the Phillips Device Manager after you hook it up to your computer it takes only a minute to repair it but when it does repair it erases all of your songs that were on the player.

I paid 30 dollars for it and it has lasted me since April 2006. Another plus about it is that it is very sturdy i dropped it tons of times and it still works.

I use mine when I am on the tredmill or when I jog. The battery life is not that bad and if you register it when you first get it they will replace the back if it falls off. I like it and I only paid $60 for it. Not for the hardcore music fan.

I have used this MP3 and find it fairly easy to use although the cradle for the player is difficult to seat the player itself into without hitting the buttons on the side. Other then that inconvenience it works very well.

Pros:

I like the talking stopwatch.

Sound quality is OK, I like the EQ & Bass level options.

Headphones stay in place.

Pretty durable. I've had mine over a year, it's been dropped lots and still works.(see arm bracket mounting issues below.)



But, Oh, the CONS:

Battery life is HORRIBLE. I'm lucky if I get two workouts per battery.

They need to use more than one AAA battery for this thing.

Never could get the mini-SD card to work. Won't play songs from it even IF I get lucky and can even get songs on the card in the first place. My card works fine on other devices.

Customer service could not fix the card issues & seemed clueless about them. To their credit, they did answer the phone & try hard.

Hard to use w/ the arm bracket. It's OK once it's in there, but you have to remove the headphones to mount it. Plus it's tricky to get it seated right & I've dropped mine lots in the process. I usually accidentally push buttons when mounting & turn it off/on when I don't want to.

Hard to see the display outside.

First the player wouldn't recognized the MiniSD card. Then Dealing with Philips for the warranty was Horrible. They sent me 2 different units and one was worse than the other. ended up settling for a refund. It's not worth the headache.

Pros:
Great design for the gym
Good radio reception
Built-in stopwatch
Very inexpensive

Cons:
Bad battery life
Only compatible for sync with WMP 10 (not the newest)
Very difficult to add a play list

Overall, I like it just because of the great design and ease of use while exercising. This MP3 player is the reason why I started using rechargeable batteries.