Philips GoGear Vibe – An alternative to Shuffle

Sum and Substance:

Thumbs Up:

Good quality of music, comes with a screen which is really great for such a lot price player.

Thumbs Down:

Bundled ear buds have poor quality.

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

Philips GoGear Vibe has a 4 GB integrated memory; the headphones have 84 dB signal to noise ratio, the player weighs 1.2 oz. The unit is 4.6 inches high, 2.6 inches wide, and 1.7 inches deep. The bundled software includes Philips Media Converter software and standard utilities & drivers. Supported audio formats are MP3 and WMA. Sample rate is 8-48 KHz, response bandwidth is 20-18000 Hz, supported bit rate is 8-320 kbps, the screen is 1.5 inches big and has a 128×128 pixels resolution.
Additional features include USB 2.0 compatibility, Volume control, Upgradeable firmware and SuperScroll. Factory equalizer presets include Jazz, Techno, Hip Hop, Classic, and Rock. The player has 20 presets for FM. You get binaural ear buds and USB cable bundled with the player. The device runs on 290 mAh lithium polymer battery. Supported OS for computer connectivity are Microsoft Windows XP SP2 or later and Microsoft Windows Vista.

Razzle Dazzle:

The player might not look the sexiest but we were interested at its compact design. Philips GoGear Vibe is 2.5 inches high, 0.25 inch thick, 1.25 inches wide which lets you slip the device easily in your pocket.

Inside Dope:

Philips GoGear Vibe may not be as good as iPod and we think it was not made to compete directly with the Apple’s product anyways. Still, this is a really affordable (just $50) MP3 player and gives the Shuffle a good for the money. In terms of the design, the player looks pretty attractive. Inside the package, you get an installation software, booklet, ear buds, and USB adapter. The device has a glossy surface and it surely attracts a lot of finger prints. The body is really small and this will easily fit in to the tightest of jeans. But, we didn’t like the buttons, as they were quite stiff to press. There is also a cheap clicking sound when you press the buttons. However, looking the price point, this is forgivable. The player is excellent for portability, it cuddles nicely in your palm and looking at the tiny size, we would recommend this for gym work outs. The battery has a rated life of 25 hours for audio and for video, it is four hours.

Philips GoGear Vibe integrates well with Windows Media Player; it gets recognized by the software immediately when you plug in the device to your computer. We used WMP (Windows Media Player) for playing all our tracks and so we were glad that it supported the player so well. For creating play lists, all we had to do was drag and drop.
Menu feature set on the Philips GoGear Vibe is typical of music player; you can control the quality of sound through equalizer settings and also see song titles. The screen is just 1.5 inches big but Philips does really well fitting in the album art and track information on the display. The interface, overall, is simple and clean. Options for playback include standard playback and shuffle. You don’t have the scroll wheel or any of the cool touch screen features but the cross pad still is user friendly. The Back and Play button are easy to operate. Along with the player, there is a reference manual which gives detailed information about the player features. This will be really handy if you are new to the MP3 music player world. But for people like us who drool on gadgets all day, getting along with this device doesn’t take more than ten minutes.
Philips GoGear Vibe’s audio quality is not that good when heard through the bundled headphones. We took this off and replaced it with our Bose headphones. The sound quality now was as good as the iPhone. What we mean to say here is that the bundled ear buds are not good but we won’t complain about that here looking at the low price.
Philips GoGear Vibe also has FM radio. The supported audio formats are WMA and MP3. Other features include photo viewing and voice recording. This device also has video playback capabilities but we were skeptical about watching the clips on such a tiny screen. We put some videos on the player and our worst fears came true. The small screen has awful resolution and it is really poor in displaying videos. You also have to convert your clips in some low end format (software for this is provided) so we won’t recommend you watching movies on this player. Don’t buy this if you are just looking for a dedicated video player.
This player is made for music enthusiasts who are on a stiff budget. Switch the headphones and the audio quality will be as good as your iPod. Thus, the price and sound quality are the best features on of this player.

Nitty Gritty:

Swap the ear buds for some good quality headphones and you will have stellar sound quality from the Philips GoGear Vibe. It has a compact design and so we would recommend this player while working out in the gym.