Mp3 Players and Ipod Reviews

Philips - GoGear SA9200 review

The Philips SA9200 has 2GB of flash memory housed in its thin, black and silver body, the back of which is brushed aluminum. This 2GB of memory is capable of storing up to 1,000

songs (MP3, WMA) or 500 digital images (JPEG), which are transferred onto the SA9200 through a USB cable, which also charges the player’s internal battery. The battery offers upwards of 14 hours of playtime before needing to be recharged.

The Philips GoGear SA9200 MP3 Player is 2 GigaBytes of sleek, sensory touchpad superscroll goodness. You heard us right!

It offers a unique way of navigating around the device. The only actual “push” buttons are the ones for the volume and to turn it on/off or to lock it. Everything else is done via Philips’ “Sensory TouchPad Superscroll”, which is a pretty nifty way of getting to and playing your music.

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.

Users just tap, drag or swipe a finger along the touch-sensitive strip to navigate through their library of music and photos. Graphic icons, illustrated menus and even album artwork makes the SA9200 fun and simple to use. Music collections can be helpfully arranged into easy-to-understand categories such as Artist, Album, Genre, and Playlists. All content, including photographs, are displayed on the bright, clear 1.7-inch (4cm) colour screen

It’s obviously a pretty stylish device, then, while build quality seems extremely good and the brushed black aluminium finish is sure to appeal. The biggest impact on the looks front comes from the luminous blue controls that fade in on the touch-sensitive display in a similar way to the recently reviewed Maxfield Max-Ivy.

Its dimensions of 90 x 46 x 8.9 mm make it just a little taller and fatter than the iPod but the screen is a little larger at 1.7”. Other features include a touch screen interface, 2GB of NAND flash memory, MP3 and WMA compatibility, as well as PlaysForSure classification, and 14 hours of battery life.

TechMobile reviews The big sticking point with the GoGear 9200 is the unusually high retail price. £169 for a 2GB player is a Hell of a lot considering the competition, and although you should expect prices to drop once it’s been around for a while this is still extortionately high in the current market, particularly bearing in mind the limited feature set. This is the biggest problem with what is otherwise a nice little player that comes the closest yet to matching Apple’s dimensions.