I recently had a chance to toy around with the Philips SA 3115. It is a 1 gig PVP by Philips part of the GoGear range of Mp3 players. M review will be completely unbiased as I didn't buy it, just borrowed my friend's for a week. [ok, exchanged for something]
Design :
The Philips GoGear looks great. It is nice and slim, not of course as slim as the nano, but sufficiently slim to fit into any pocket you care to name. The front is made of a piano black finish black which is not as scratch-prone as you may think. It doesn't even attract nearly as many fingerprints as say, the PSP, but you will need to keep wiping it if you hate fingerprints. The back, is irritatingly made of the same chrome-y material of the current ipod nanos. This has surprised me as it is one of the most scratch prone surfaces ever made. But one screen guard and one back-guard [?] later, you are good to go.
The buttons, to be honest feel kind of cheap. There is a 4-way pad with a centre click button, a "menu" button [that according to me should have been named the "back" button] to the left, and a handy [but rarely used playlist button that adds the currently playing song to a playlist] which is located to the right. Nice to see a dedicated +/- volume rocker which is on the right of the player. To the left you will find the hold switch as well as a mic for recording. The bottom sports a reset switch, 3.5mm jack and the mini-USB port. I found the placement of the hold switch rather uncomfortable. It would have been much better on the right of the player.
The face buttons are nowhere near as responsive as i would like them to be. But there is a nice satisfying click.
The screen is a nice bright 1.8" screen that does 65k colors at 320x240. While it is nowhere near as bright as say, the nano's screen, it is sufficiently sharp and clear for most.
Interface :
This is what is set to kill this player. The interace is not that bad, but it is positively sluggish. And if you have more that 30-40 artists finding the correct song you want will make you want to tear your hair out. It is essentially easy enough to use, with a nice menu structure and everything, but it is just too slow to be allowed. There is also a slight delay in the pressing of a button and something happening. This only aggravates it further. It's like the player strongly believes in the saying, "Look before you leap".
I found the inclusion of a dedicated menu button rather silly. It would have done much better with a context menu button. As a result, the interface is rather basic. All you can do at the now playing screen is switch to the next song, change volume etc... nowhere near as deep as say, the Creative Zen.
Another major flaw is that holding down a direction will take you through a list annoyingly slowly.
Even my w810i's interface is a LOT better.
Features :
The player has quite a bit of features to boast of. It supports photos. They look great on the screen. Again only very basic functionality.
Moving on to videos, the player leaves you sorely disappointed here. It only supports videos upto 20fps! And at a max bitrate of 384 kbps....That makes all videos boringly slow to watch. All but the shortest of videos are completely unwatchable. Forget about even watching a 15 minute cartoon. It is un-doable.
The Radio, on the other hand was really good. The reception was stellar, better than anything I have ever used. Again, very basic usage here too. All you can do is auto tune and set presets.
The Voice recorder did it's job really well. The recording was very audible. But i wouldn't recommend it for recording soft or far-off voices.
Even format support is very disappointing. It only supports MP3 and WMA..... nope, no AAC.
Audio Quality :
I tested several tracks benchmarking it against my PSP and my w810i. All testing was done using EP-630s.
Overall, the Player offers just middle of the road quality. It was really lacking in Bass and Treble, leading to what i will describe as flat sound. It really takes the spark out of a lot of songs. But clarity was nice and surprisingly, detail loss was minimum. In all aspects except overall volume, it scored lower than the PSP and w810i in my book.
If you are even slightly a Bass Freak, or consider yourself a music lover, then stay away. If you are a strictly casual listener, then it should satisfy you.
Verdict :
The SA-3115 is a very middle of the road player, that has quite a few features for the price, and looks nice as well. But it's middle-of-the-road sound quality and slow and basic interface should keep all but casual music listeners away. Not recommended. Even if you are on a budget go for the Zen Stone or if you can stretch it a bit, get a nano or a zen.
Overall Rating : 2/5.
Philips GoGear SA-3115 review
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