Philips SA9200/17 GoGear Super-Slim 2 GB Flash MP3 Player

by Philips

Product Details

• Item Weight: 1.6 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B000H1ZYMQ
• Item model number: SA9200/17
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #74,171 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Chic, dependable, and ultra-intuitive, the GoGear SA9200 MP3 player lets you enjoy the world of digital music anywhere, anytime. The compact device measures a mere 1.81 by 3.45 by 0.35 inches (W x H x D), making it small enough to fit in a pocket or purse with ease. Yet its 2 GB of built-in flash memory stores up to 1,000 songs, so you can listen to all your favorite MP3 or WMA tracks while working out or commuting. And thanks to the 1.7-inch color LCD screen--which offers a resolution of 128 x 160 pixels--you can also share up to 560 JPEG photos with friends in slide-show format, complete with a custom soundtrack in the background.

The GoGear SA9200 is a breeze to control thanks to the sensory touchpad, which lets you navigate through hundreds of songs easily and smoothly--or one at a time--in just a few seconds. The scroll key senses your finger movements on the touchpad and adjusts the speed to your navigation through the menus or tracks accordingly. An enlarged alphabetical letter, meanwhile, helps you keep track of your position in the menu while scrolling for songs and artists. As a result, you know exactly when to release your finger from the touchpad. The device even lets you control playback and browse at the same time--a rarity among many MP3 players.

Another handy feature is the unit's PlaysForSure compatibility, which guarantees a wide choice of online music stores and synchronizes your collection easily with Windows Media Player. And audio-centric listeners will dig the GoGear SA9200's variety of equalizer settings--you can choose from classic, dance, electronica, hip-hop, lounge, pop, R&B, rock, spoken word, or custom--and the SRS WOW bass enhancement. Other details include a soft fabric pouch, a USB 2.0 interface (cable included), and support for ID3 tagging.

The GoGear SA9200, which runs for up to 14 hours per charge of its lithium-polymer battery, is backed by a one-year warranty.

What's in the Box
GoGear SA9200 MP3 player, headphones, soft fabric pouch, USB cable, software CD- ROM, quick-start guide, user's manual.

Product Description

Super Slim, 2 GB Flash, MP3, 1.7" color screen, plays MP3 and WMA, plays up to 14 hours of music, sensory touch pad for fast navigation, PlaysForSure, stores up to 1000 songs or 560 photos, compatible with Windows XP, USB 2.0.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Maybe the most elegant mp3 player on the market today., February 20, 2007

By 

D. McGuigan "David M." (Salt Lake City, UT) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Philips SA9200/17 GoGear Super-Slim 2 GB Flash MP3 Player (Electronics)

I just picked mine up for $135.00 at Office Depot, literally, because of how it looks. It makes the iPod look silly, casual, and plain in comparison. All gloss black, with well-designed navigation shapes that illuminate a warm blue when active, and disappear completely when inactive.

The navigation is INCREDIBLE. I've used a few iPods, and prefer the layout and interactivity of this Philips's navigation. It's got one button for forward (down a level), one for backward (up a level), and then a single line down the center for scrolling, which is highly-accurate (touch-sensitive).

My favorite part is that you can download album art OR CREATE YOUR OWN IMAGES (200 x 200 pixels) that will display while playing any particular album (or song if you configure it).

Battery life is excellent. Fonts and design are above average. Price might seem a little high, but I actually find myself THANKFUL that I spent the money and got the most attractive mp3 player I've seen to date.

Usually kind of anti-Philips, but this product is a serious home run.

Also, don't pay attention to the fact that it says Windows Media Player 10 compatibility ONLY, you can browse and use it as a pretty high-speed hard drive from My Computer easily and effectively. So, I use iTunes as my player and manager, and then just drag the album folders from my iTunes installation folder right to the Music folder of the device in Windows Explorer, and it's super fast. Then, just create a .jpg named Album Art.jpg (with the space in the filename) and put it in the same directory as the album, and whala, that's what'll show while songs from that album play.

Anyway, INCREDIBLE PRODUCT. I haven't been this excited to use a consumer electronic device since I bought my first PDA.

Final notes:
Surprisingly smooth, fluid, and classy navigational animation. I was IMPRESSED by an mp3 player. The headphones seem pretty sweet too, loud, crisp, and portable. I'm not headphone expert though. But this is my 4th mp3 player.

5 effing stars. Well-deservedly.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Just couldn't stand by and say nothing after reading these reviews!, April 19, 2007

By 

johnb|aze (MI, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Philips SA9200/17 GoGear Super-Slim 2 GB Flash MP3 Player (Electronics)

SERIOUSLY, Do you all have the same mp3 player I have? I have a Philips SA9200/17 GoGear Super-Slim 2GB MP3 Player... what exactly do you other guys have?

Because, I've seriously had nothing but a blast with this sexy mp3 player! Heck, it gets 3 stars for the blue LEDs that are activated by touch and follow your fingertip - n i c e!

Sound quality is better than EXCELLENT! You know people are looking for something to complain about when they complain about sound quality on an mp3 player. You can buy an el cheapo mp3 player and it'll have decent sound because of the format alone. Maybe that person had a bad set of earphones OR had them in his head upside down b/c you get acceptable sound from $10 earbuds, cmon!

I seriously think Apple must have an online team of review grunts b/c this same thing happened when the Creative line of mp3 players came out with both guns blazin'. There were far too many off the wall reviews aimed at discrediting the whole Creative line. However, Creative got past that biased crap and I'm more than confident Philips will too b/c this thing is top shelf in every respect.

I haven't gotten into the pictures and so forth yet but something is telling me since that was the ONLY gripe from the one reveiwer (and b/c he couldn't figure out how to load pics he gave it 1 star) it's probably just something you have to learn the process to and from then on it's easy going. All I can say is that it's been better than I expected in every respect especially with navigation and battery life - two really important aspects of any player like this.

I've owned two nano's and a mini. One nano was lost/stolen, sold the mini, and my first nano died on me (or I killed it) but I couldn't get it to power back on one day. I liked them all to be honest but I'd put this up against an ipod any day of the week!

jblz

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Almost awesome!, December 13, 2007

By 

Richard L. Longland (Durham, NC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Philips SA9200/17 GoGear Super-Slim 2 GB Flash MP3 Player (Electronics)

I ended up returning this mp3 player, but It wasn't all bad. I'll start off by talking about what I did like about it, before saying why I ended up returning it. I see it's now $70 on amazon, which is a good price (I paid $80).

Good things:
1) I'll start off by agreeing with some of the reviewer here that this is probably THE most elegant looking mp3 player on the market. The blue touch buttons that light up when you press them are a lot of fun. The screen art is simple but elegant too. Easy to read menus and nice scrolling song titles for those long song names.
2) The scroll bar down the center is also a beautiful idea. A lot of people say that they find the touch interface too sensitive (including my wife), but I had no trouble with it at all. After about 5 minutes of using it, I was flying through the menus. The scroll bar can be used to scroll one menu item at a time, or you can swipe it to scroll very quickly down a long list. This is a great alternative to the iPod's wheel thingy, and I found myself just scrolling up and down menus for the fun of it!
3) The sound quality sounded ok to me, but I don't have a set of $300 ear buds to check it with. With my nicer Sennheiser headphones, the bass sounded rich, the trebles clear. That's all I was really after.

Now onto the things I did not like about this mp3 player.
1) The first and main thing was the resume feature. If you turn off the player for less than about 30 mins, it will resume from where you left off. That is, if you're halfway though a song, it'll star playing from that point when you turn it back on. However, if it's off for any more time that that, it will go back to the main menu when you power back on. I have some long 1.5 hour mp3s, so having to fast forward back to the same point in a track is a real pain! That brings me onto another one of my problems with this player.
2) Fast forward (within a track) is very slow! It would take about 5 mins or more to get an hour into a track. It seemed to have big issues with this, I have no idea why. I did a few things to try to fix this problem, first I upgraded the firmware (the software that is installed on the mp3 player itself), and I called customer support. That was another reason I decided to return this player.
3) The website for downloading the firmware was TERRIBLE! It was very hard to navigate, and the instructions for the firmware were very cryptic. They also don't list what has actually changed in the firmware versions, but I gather the only things they upgrade are the Vista compatibility. When I called the support line about the resume problem, I actually called twice. The first time I got a fairly helpful girl, who said that one of their technicians had taken one home and found the same thing, so it's probably a "design feature" which is not on any lists to fix. The second time I got a very unhelpful guy who kept telling me about the power off feature (it turns itself off if inactive for 5 mins or so, which is fair enough), and had no idea what I meant by the resume feature. He even told me that I could send it in, but it probably wasn't worth it!
4) The player doesn't support songs with special characters such as "&". What?!?! I spent quite some time fixing this issue on my mp3s, but when I got to Röyksopp, I refused to change their name just for the mp3 player.
5) This wasn't a problem for me, but if you don't organise your id3 tags (the tags such as track name, track number, artist etc), it will be hard to get the player to play albums in the correct order. I do organise mine, so it wasn't a problem until someone gave me some songs (legally, they were an internet mix) which were played in a random order.

So in summary: This mp3 player looks great! If you just want one for listening to regular music, not long tracks with funny names, it's great. The menus are easy to navigate, and well organised. Philips were so very nearly there with this, and hopefully in the future they'll get sorted with the problems I had. There aren't lots of flashy features, but I don't use the ones on my new mp3 player anyway (Samsung YP-T10 which I'm very happy with). I liked this player, but for my purposes, it just wasn't good enough.