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|  | |  | | | Philips GoGear Ariaz 8 GB MP3 Player (Silver) | | | | | | | |
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| $79.99 | |
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| | Features | FullSoundTM to bring the CD listening experience to MP3 and headphonesMore content choices with Rhapsody and Audible support2.4-Inch full color display for fantastic video qualityUp to 45-hour music or 5-hour video playbackPhilips Songbird to discover play and sync
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| | Description | Tune in to GoGear Ariaz with FullSound and sound isolation headphones for exceptional sound on the go. Enjoy entertainment galore with its 2.4? screen, Philips Songbird, and superbly long music (45 hours) and video (5 hours) playback. | |
| | Product Details | | Product Length: | 2.05 inches | | Product Width: | 0.35 inches | | Product Height: | 3.62 inches | | Product Weight: | 0.2 pounds | | Package Length: | 6.9 inches | | Package Width: | 6.2 inches | | Package Height: | 1.3 inches | | Package Weight: | 0.4 pounds | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 49 reviews |
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| | Customer Reviews | Average Customer Review: ( 49 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
33 of 37 found the following review helpful:
 Keep it warm Aug 16, 2010
By Laura Blackledge-Cohen
This is actually a review of a GoGear Aria. This is my first MP3 player so all comparisons will be to other kinds of devices.
1) The radio reception is terrific: so much better than any of the other armband-type radios I've had that there's really no comparison.
2) Charges fast with 8 or more hours battery time.
3) Sound with the earbuds that come with it is kind of flat, but I never use earbuds anyway. Sound with my own (I'm currently using JVC hanger-style) is great.
4) Obviously, there's plenty of memory.
5) The "buttons" don't work well, or at all, if the player gets too cold or goes unused for any period of time. This is easily remedied by carrying it close to your skin. This is a fairly minor annoyance and the reason I gave it a 4 star rating.
6) Images on the screen are bright and clear.
7) There is a 4- minute voice recording feature which works quite well.
8) My desktop runs Windows 7, and the two seem to be pretty well synched - I have had no problems getting it going or downloading from my library. Transfers from Overdrive (audiobooks through my local library) is fast and easy.
9) It has no capacity for "bookmarking," although it will resume where you left off; there's no click wheel or any other way to fast forward other than to hold down the FF button, which can get pretty agravating if you need to get half way through a one-hour track which is common with many audiobooks.
Overall, I really like it, use it constantly, and am very satisfied with my purchase.
23 of 25 found the following review helpful:
 Beautiful in form and function, Hideous Installation Experience Jul 22, 2010
By Miz Ellen
"all the letters of my real name"
I can remember back to my parent's stereo cabinet. It was a lovely piece of furniture a little smaller than a writing desk. The sleek polished wood concealed a turntable with settings and needles that allowed it to play any type of vinyl record. Dial forward half a century: the modern music player fits easily in the curve of a hand.
Although small, the PHILIPS GoGear ARIAZ SONGBIRD is as beautiful as the old music cabinet. Its sleek case of brushed metal has a silky feel. I've only had it a couple of days and because of a torturous installation process I'm just beginning to discover its capacities, however I can testify that the sound is fabulous.
I've played both classical favorites and rock classics on it and the sound was perfectly delivered throughout the dynamic ranges and up and down the tone scale.
The device automatically searched out and compiled a list of all the FM stations in my area. Even on stations with a notoriously weak signal in my house or car, the Philips GoGear Aria 8 sounds crisp and clear.
The controls are few but intuitive. Playing around enabled me to discover menus for music, video and pictures, radio, text and voice recording. This is an exciting amount of function packed into a compact package. The 8GB memory dwarfs that of the computer to which it docks. I wish more documentation had been included with the device, especially for the settings menu, but I look forward to playing with it and enjoying all the features it offers.
The installation process as outlined in the "Quick start guide" looked easy. Expecting a normal "plug and play" process I plugged in the device and began clicking on the panels as my computer presented them.
USERS OF XP BEWARE: if you are installing to a computer using XP, it's easier to install it wrong. Everything seems to install perfectly. One can even rip CDs and create a music library. However the computer regards the mp3 player as a flash drive and won't transfer any of the music to the device. If you have done this, you have to uninstall everything. Then go to the Philips website as listed in your guide and find the correct page for your model number.
Click on the link for setup and installation. Download everything without changing a single default and reinstall the device. I was delighted when all the music I had previously transferred to my library was still there. I clicked on the Automatic Sync Option and boom! Everything began to transfer to the player. The screen shows a graphic while this is happening.
I also tried to install the device to a laptop using Vista. I've had a tortured experience with that operating system and quickly abandoned the try as I'm ditching that machine in favor of one that runs Windows 7. The manufacturer of the GoGear assures that it will run with Windows 7.
Another tip I want to share with new owners is that it took nearly two days of being attached to a computer for my device to be fully charged. You might want to invest in one of the optional chargers that the website advises can be used instead.
After 6 days of ownership:The longer I have the GoGear the more I love it. The earbuds warm up and feel weightless. One lives and moves in a cloud of glorious sound. Ambient noises are not completely excluded but the danger is that the mind gets totally taken by the music. The body of the device is so unobtrusive it can ride in a breast pocket (or, ahem, the feminine equivalent) and be completely unnoticed. I have no problems adding or deleting music to my music library although I am still learning how to add content to my little pet.
One useful tip: Before you connect the device to the computer to add content, check the "PC connection preference" setting. Instead of making it easy, the designer makes you chose between "MSC" and "MTP" modes. If MSC is chosen, your computer will treat the player like a flash drive and not transfer stuff to it. You have to pick "MTP" to get new content on the player. Choosing stupid terminology like this rather than "Send" and "Load" is my main quarrel with the designers. Currently the device comes with a coupon for a free audio book from audible.com (until Dec. 31, 2010). After much trial and mostly error, I finally got the book downloaded to the player--the player tends to reset itself to send data to the computer rather than to accept it and that turned out to be the last hurdle to overcome in order to get my free audio book.
41 of 48 found the following review helpful:
 A Miserable, Headache-Inducing Experience Sep 17, 2010
By Phoenix Child
To put it in extremely blunt, layman's terms, the Aria is the iPod's trailer-trash cousin. I'll list the good qualities first and foremost, because, frankly, the good qualities last all of one extended descriptive sentence: The Aria features attractive packaging, a nice product name, a very good, bass-friendly sound system, ease of use, and quality picture/video viewing. That's literally the end of the good.
Now, let's start with the bad: This is the worst MP3 player I've *ever* owned, and as a self-professed audiophile I've owned everything from my trusty iPod to a cheap Wal-Mart brand 50 song shuffle. Nothing has ever given me as much of a headache as the Aria.
Firstly, the Aria comes with its own program - the SongBird. Let me issue a one-time only warning: DO NOT *EVER* INSTALL THIS ON YOUR COMPUTER. The SongBird system is an enormous, consuming program that is extremely difficult to use, often causing your computer to freeze/crash at times unknown. It is very, very hard to use and trying to use the program to load files onto your Aria will produce migraines. It was a relief to find that I could actually use Windows Media Player to load files onto the Aria.
After doing this, however, I discovered that the Aria is a poor sorting system in and of itself. For instance, I have several "Greatest Hits" compilations on my computer. The Aria confuses itself into thinking that these are all by the same artist. Therefore, when I meant to click on to Pink Floyd's greatest hits, it instead started playing Sheryl Crow's (it does this for everything; for instance if you have the Broadway version of a musical and the movie version of a musical, it will jumble all the songs together in a confusing mishmash). Also, the Aria will not inform you if its system doesn't support a file. There were many MP3 files that I downloaded onto the Aria that merely took up space and refused to play when I tried to play them.
After this disappointing foray, it was time for the nightmare to begin.
I tried to offload these files from my Aria, only to have the thing crash. After it crashed, it continued to insist that those files were still on its system even though they clearly weren't. After that, it became a nightmare of the Aria only loading certain tracks onto itself and claiming that it either "didn't have enough room" or already had a track on that I could no longer access. In my one week of attempting to use the wretched thing, I had to depress the "reset" button four times, before I finally completely gave up.
In summation, I cannot recommend that you pass this item up enough. The *only* commendable feature this player possesses is its amazing sound system; if you can stomach the uphill-in-mud-and-hot-sun struggle of getting files on the damn thing in the first place, then you will not be disappointed with the playback quality (this feature is the one reason I reviewed this product with a two-star instead of a one-star). If you truly have the time, patience and ability to load your files onto this piece of equipment just to enjoy the sound system, then you must have the patience of a saint, and I genuinely wish you luck in the struggle.
1 out of 5 stars; 2 out of 5 if you count the sound system as a redeeming feature.
All in all? Extreme dissatisfaction.
9 of 9 found the following review helpful:
Great sound and video, terrible music management Jul 19, 2010
By Patrick Oden
First off, let me offer some praise for the Philips GoGear. It really does have great sound. I've mostly avoided use of ipods over the years and have owned a Creative Zen, a Sansa Fuze, and now a Sansa Clip is my primary mp3 player. I've listened to a variety of other players, including ipods. This new Aria offers some of the best sound I've heard from an Mp3 player, with both quality and volume potential very outstanding. Though, curiously, I did not find that the advertised "Fullsound" makes too much difference. Playing with the equalizer gave better sound quality.
In looking at reviews, I was at first rather disturbed by the suggestions that video quality was immensely poor and how it used a very rare file type, and required a long process of converting standard video formats in order to play on the Aria.
This was pretty quickly shown to be inaccurate. Although there is not a "II" next to the name above, this seems to be a very updated player with significant improvements in both video quality and format.
Indeed, a bit of research shows that this really is more accurately called the GoGear Ariaz II, so reviews and comments that reflect the first version should not be applied to this one. For music this player plays mp3, wma, wav, flac, ape files. For video, it can play mp4 or wmv. For pictures, it displays jpg, jpeg, and bmp. So, this means it plays the standard formats for non-Ipod players. Coupled with its very high sound quality, this would seem to make the GoGear Ariaz worth looking at.
However...
First of all, there's a bit of deception with the picture and assorted descriptions. This player does not contain noise-isolating headphones. Though some charts do indicate this, the product picture wrongly shows noise isolating headphones. More than this, an included "introduction" video included on the player discusses the noise isolating headphones, and the user manual shows noise isolating headphones on its cover. So, there's some clear confusion and even possibly intentional deception going on. This is not a huge matter, because no doubt the noise isolating headphones it would ship with would be fairly low quality, though the included earbuds are, admittedly, decent for what they are. Fortunately, I have some Etymotic Research ER6i Isolator In-Ear Earphones (Black) which I use.
Another small frustration is the included documentation. There is no user guide, except for a pdf file on the player, which is not entirely thorough and did not address most of my problems. There is a quick start guide, but in an attempt to avoid printing in a number of languages, this guide uses mostly images and symbols. There are arrows and icons and numbers and all sorts of other "helpful" indications that because you don't know what the symbols and icons are becomes more of a bit of comedy than easy help. The quick start guide quickly starts to you look on line or elsewhere for actual help.
Significantly more frustrating is the navigation and software for this player. The packaged Songbird software is, essentially, a lesser version of the Windows Media Player that has some more integration with Philips partners such as 7digital store. Upon installation it seeks to become the primary media player for all your songs and videos. Probably not worth installing because of how much it tries to do. Unfortunately, it tries to take over but unfortunately fails at what should be its key task which is managing the music and videos on the player.
Most troublesome is that there seems to be extremely limited playlist support. One cannot manage playlists on the player, and though one can add to a playlist, this is done song by song, which is extremely tedious. Indeed, after spending a long while trying to figure out how to add music connected with a playlist I found after several attempts that it can be used with Windows media player, adding songs by adding them within a playlist. Even this was not easy. I tried it once, which got the songs on but not the playlists, tried reconnecting the player to try again, and it added the playlist while showing that the songs were already on the player. Don't know if it is always a 2 step process, but it finally did work for me. However, these wmp created playlists cannot be managed at all on the player itself. It will play them. But you can't add to, delete from, or otherwise alter the playlists at all.
There are 3 "playlists to go" that can be added to on the player itself, but these are very simplistic, song by song, lists, which make them mostly useless. These are, sadly, the only playlists the player has access to change. The ability to make, add to, manage a playlist is, for me, one of the most important aspects of an mp3 player because I want to turn it on, set a mood or style, and then go about my business. My Sansa products also do not have good playlist management, but they do allow one to play songs acccording to "genre" which allows for a pretty simple workaround. The Aria does not allow to play by genre, limiting you to artist or album. Meaning it is, for me, pretty useless as a convenient player. My Sansa clip+ also has the great benefit of having a memory card slot, allowing for a lot more memory and flexibility.
I almost gave this product three stars because the terrible software and lack of good music management really does undermine this player as a whole. These problems are, to be sure, able to be fixed by a firmware and software update, so hopefully Philips will realize its big failings in this regard (and in suggesting it comes with noise isolating headphones).
The player sounds great but it just does not allow for convenient management of my music collection nor allow me to be flexible in how I want to listen. To really compete with an ipod, a player has to have more than really good sound and video. It has to allow for immense flexibility and convenience, utilizing WMP and other such software in a very intuitive and easy way, overcoming the ipods dependence on itunes. But it doesn't. No doubt there are ways to use a playlist or make music management a bit easier, but this is very non-intuitive and needlessly complicated. Making a playlist on an mp3 player and managing one already made should be very easy, very convenient, and very flexible.
So, I give it four stars, not because it has any big faults. It doesn't. It's a good player. But it in no way stands out in a very crowded market of ipod competitors. It tries to repeat what has been already done by WMP and other programs without adding any extra functionality or user friendly music management. Yes, it has FM radio (which it picks up well), plays videos nicely, acts as a good voice recorder. But just about every non-ipod does that as well.
EDIT: I did originally give this player three stars, but have edited my review as I feel it deserves four stars. Why? Well, mostly because I am finding myself using it as my primary mp3 player again and again. It's the one I pick up, and that says alot. After the big initial frustration of getting playlists to work, I am now simply enjoying the quality of music and the ease of playing it. But most of all, what drives it to another star is the battery life. This player lasts an immense amount of time without needing to be recharged. I haven't done an exact test because I just don't have more than a day to listen to music at a time. My sensa clip had convenience but it rarely lasts more than seven hours of playtime. Seven hours of this Ariaz, and it's barely showing any change in the battery meter. I love that!
7 of 7 found the following review helpful:
Great budget selection Aug 19, 2010
By M. M. Jackson
At half the price of a comparably-sized iPod, this is a nice unit with a decent interface, video and picture playback, and an FM radio.
Only downside for me was lack of a "true" line out...you are stuck using headphone out...I prefer line out like iPod, but in any event...like I said, at half the price of an iPod, this is a go-to device to give (for example) your kid, where you're not sure if they'll still have it a month from now.
The buttons are a little bit clunky, and the text on the interface is a little low-rez, but other than that it's a big, clean, pretty interface that does what it says it will.
Also, nice touch is that it plays FLAC, which I like for high quality. Headphone output sound quality was comparable to iPod current gen players.
Good product, good price for performance, I would generally recommend.
See all 49 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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