Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A decent MP3 player - once you worked out the kinks, September 8, 2009
The Philips GoGear 16 GB Aria MP3 Video Player offers a lot of features for its price: 14.8GB storage, 25-hour battery life, high quality earphones, FM radio, voice recorder, etc. However, it seems to be poorly received by most reviewers so far. Frankly, my first impression was not entirely positive. But after most initial problems and confusions were resolved, this device turns out to be a very good value as a MP3 player.
Some problems and how to resolve them:
1. Documentation:
The enclosed "Quick Start Guide" is quite useless. It is very brief, and printed in tiny fonts. Luckily, there is an "User Manual" found on the mini-CD, which is a lot more comprehensive. You can also go to Philips web site support section, and download the latest documentation/software for "GoGear Aria 16GB" (SA1ARA16K/17)
2. User Interface:
Initially, I was having difficulty with navigation and control. In particular, the PLAY/Confirm button often requires several clicks to register. Finally, I pressed the 'RESET" button to restart the whole device (it does not delete my files, by the way). From that point onward, I never have any problems with button clicks any more.
3. PC Connection:
By default, the device connects to PC in MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) mode. This is required if you want to use the Rhapsody music channel. I changed it to MSC (Mass Storage Class) mode, so that the device behaves exactly like an USB flash drive. This way, I can simply 'drag-and-drop' MP3 files into the player, instead of going through Windows Media Player. File transfer speed from PC to the player is about 3MB/S.
There is one problem I have not yet resolved. I prefer to organize my MP3 files in sub-directories, one for each album. This player allows me to use "Folder View" to navigate and play MP3 files in any directory. Unfortunately, it will not continue to play into the next directory. So after listening to each album, I have to manually navigate to a new album and restart playing.
Other observations:
- The sound quality of included earphones is reasonable, but they need to be inserted deep into ear canals to work correctly. I prefer my old Bose QC1 headphones, since they cover over my ears and are more comfortable over extended period.
- The video player mode is mostly a gimmick. A small screen with resolution of 220x176 is barely acceptable for playing short animations. All video files must be converted into SMV (Streaming Mobile Video) format using the included software. The conversion is slow and inefficient. It takes about 6 minutes just to convert a 90-second anime video, and the resulted file size is even larger than the original (higher resolution) version!
- The GoGear Aria is highly similar to the SanDisk Sansa Fuze in terms of physical size (see my Customer Image), battery life, and features. The Fuze is available up to 8GB only, but its capacity can be expanded using Micro-SDHC card.
In summary: The Philips GoGear Aria is hardly an iPod-killer. But considering its low cost and rich feature set, it makes a decent MP3 player for my money.
[Update on Nov 22, 2009]:
Exactly three weeks after purchase, my player suffered a crash from no appearant reasons. Pressing RESET button doesn't do the trick now. I have to use the 'Repair" option form the Philips Device Manager to revive the player, and all media files were erased in the process. Luckily, the crash seems to be an one-time event, and the device has been working correctly since then.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Awesome! Just what I was looking for., September 20, 2009
I purchased this mp3 player to replace a 5-yr-old 2-gig Cowon player. I was looking for something big enough to hold all of my music, with room to spare to make use of my Rhapsody subscription. The 16-gig GoGear Aria is plenty big and is very easy to use with Rhapsody. I thought the menus were a little confusing at first, but after a few minutes of playing around with it I figured them out fairly easily. The controls are pretty straight forward and simple to use, sound quality is plenty good for my taste, and the included ear buds are pretty awesome, too. It can take a few minutes to start up sometimes just after loading new music onto it, but other than that it starts up in a few seconds so that's not a huge deal to me. All in all, I think it's a pretty great mp3 player at a reasonable price, and it's an awesome choice if you're looking for something to use with Rhapsody!
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
wrong dimensions, great MP3 players, Lacks Genre, October 22, 2009
I do not why every site I go to check this MP3 player makes it sound huge. 6.6 x6.4 x1.7. Initially I did not buy it for that reason. But when I saw it at Costco, it was that tiny wonderful gadget with a magnificent sound and ear buds. IT IS 3 X 1.7 X 0.3 INCHES. The only one disadvantage (which is importnat for me) is that the music menu does not include GENRE where you can shuffle in differnet Genre, so either the whole MP3 player has one Genre or you have to play each album or Artist separatly (boring) and if you shuffle though all the songs you will go from Led Zeplin to Mozart, Ozzi Osborn to Frank Sinatra to Sarah Brightman to Ting Tings to Christams songs i.e.Chaotic. So, Philips Programers, Please make this product perfect by adding Genre and random play in each Genre just like ZEN and itouch
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