Location :vijayawada,India.
Email:dazzler2006hyd@gmail.com
It’s a lighter, it’s a Swiss Army knife, no wait, it’s an MP3 player! That was the first thing that came to my head when I was given the piece (I was given the box later). A light model, it appears to have been designed keeping in mind the joggers out there.
I listen to lot of music….so i searched a few mp3 players and finally got my hands on Philips gogear SA1356/97 1GB model…It is a little bit old model by now but all the gogear series of products by philips are more or less similar type of performance.
The main thing that GoGear attracted me is its design.It look like a cigarette lighter and the combination of red and silver colors make it very eyecatching.The player possesses an average number of buttons on its exterior. On the top of the player are three buttons – Record, Loop Setup and Menu.At the back of the player is the lanyard loop hole. The headphone jack is adjacent to the mic hole and is situated on top of the player when held vertically.The main control buttons are fashioned in a D-Pad. The USB connector is of the slide out variety and lets you connect your player directly to your computer without the need for an extra cable.So whenever you go on a journey you dont need to carry your USB cable along with you lol.
The interface of the player is simple. The Play/ Pause button performs a double function as a Select button and the Power Button (when kept pressed for three seconds). Once the player has started up, keeping the Menu key pressed takes you to the main menu from where you can play all the music in the player, play the radio, voice recordings or browse through the contents on the player. On many models especially Transcend i didnt find the interface as simple as this.Creative Zen is okay but its design is not good at all.
AUDIO PLAYBACK:
Finally Coming to the Audio playback which matters the most . On a scale of 5 i can easily give this without doubt a 4.5.Sound is very good and there are also many customising options like setting the equalizer etc.There is no need to worry about the sound clarity.Philips easily surpasses Transcend and Creative but lags a bit behind Apple iPod.As everyone knows iPod sound quality is of very high order but when you listen to gogear you will find the difference is negligible and who wants to spend Rs 2k on an iPod which doesnt have screen,voice recording and Fm recording for a little bit advantage on sound??Definitely not me.But if you have a budget of about 7-8k then Apple is at its best.For 2k i want all the features that i can possibly get and Philips is the solution.
FM RECEPTION:
The FM reception is passable. The quality does drop suddenly without reason despite not moving it or obstructing it any way.
There is an option to record from the radio. The usage is quite simple, tune into the station that you want to record and press the record button. Keep in mind that the record function takes two seconds to start up, so if you want to catch the beginning of a song, be ready two seconds before it’s due to start. The recording quality is great and is the same as the quality of the song played over the air. So if you get a good reception you will get a great recording.
Since the player has a 1 GB memory size the length of the recorded track is nearly limitless.
VOICE RECORDING:
The voice recording is quite good for an MP3 player. It is able to pickup on normal speech even while placed a hand’s length from the speaker. The picked up sound is a little low in volume, but quite distinct.
CONNECTIVITY:
Since the player has a USB 2.0 interface and is designed with quick PC connectivity in mind, testing the speed of data transfer to and from the device was a necessity. I copied 600MB worth of MP3s to the device from my PC and then those same files back again. It took me 20 minutes to copy to the device from my PC. Copying the files back again to the PC from the device took me 13 minutes and 40 seconds. So transfer speed is a major disadvantage for this product.
Battery Life:
Before buying the product i searched the online reviews for the product and found that about 85% of them are false about battery life.I dont know how much time those guys spend listening to get the test results poor.But with my personal experience i listen for about 6-7 hrs daily at about 85% volume for most of the songs….and i need to recharge it for every 3 days for about 1.5 hour..I can easily do this in my college lab which is about 3hrs for us….So by the time i reach home it is fully charged up lol.
Justification for price:
When i bought this product 1.5 years back it costs 2k and the prices have slashed down and now for 2k you will get a 2GB model of GoGEar.For 2k I think its pretty much descent than ipod 1gb which is priced at 2.5k at that time which gives a slight advantage over sound clarity. If you listen bollYwood or some other regional songs you wont find much difference in the sound but if you listen to heavy metal or hard rock you will definitely say that Apple iPod is much better any day than any of the mp3 players out their in the market.So the main thing lies in what type of songs you wish to listen. People who prefer listening RAP/HIP HOP i say GoGEar is the best bet.
Finally Pro and cons:
Pros:
Stylish Look,Good Voice Recorder,Best Performance for Price,Ease of Use,Portability
Cons:
Low Transfer Speed
Interface becomes a little bit slow when memory is filled up completely
Cannot see the display when exposed to even low sunlight
Overall my rating: 4/5 (very much satisfied with the product)
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